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THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 








OF JESUS 


A MESSAGE OF HOPE 
AND CHEER 


By W. T.’CONNER, D.D. 


Professor of Systematic Theology in the Southwestern Baptist 
Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas; Author 
of “A System of Christian Docttine’”’ 





NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE 


SUNDAY SCHOOL BOARD 
OF THE 


SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION 


Copyright poe 


Sunday School Board 
Southern Baptist Convention 
Nashville, Tenn. 


Printed in the United States of America 


To BLANCHE HORNE CONNER 
WHOSE LIFE EXEMPLIFIES THE 
RESURRECTION POWER 
OF GOD 





PREFACE 


This book is meant primarily to convey a 
message. It is not intended to try to settle the 
questions over which scholars debate so much 
as it is to enable Christians to grasp something 
of the significance of the resurrection of Jesus 
for life and destiny. If the book shall be used 
by the Head of the church to help some of its 
readers to come anew into fellowship with the 
living Christ and know afresh something of his 
resurrection power, then the author will have 
his reward. 

I am indebted to Prof. H. E. Dana, head of 
the New Testament department in the South- 
western Seminary, for helpful suggestions. 


W. T. CONNER. 





CONTENTS 


PAGE 
PSAP TER CONE ido) olde eae R NG Be 11 
The Fact of the Resurrection of Jesus 
HAPTER E WO 8 ee i En Ea 39 
The Nature of the Resurrection of 
Jesus 
RETA PTER PHREE cet hla ene 55 


The Significance of the Resurrection of 
Jesus for Our View of God 
RAE E OUR hic tt he uy tte Dy, 71 
The Significance of the Resurrection of 
Jesus for His Own Person 
PILAR ELVES ie ieee eels era aeel 87 
The Significance of the Resurrection of 
Jesus for Our Salvation 
2) STAG ofS ha Ba eR ee A ne SD ac 107 
The Significance of the Resurrection of 
Jesus for the Future Life 
PPAR CER OE VEN | i000 Pee ai iek ys bus 123 


The Significance of the Resurrection of 
Jesus for the Coming of the King- 
dom of God 


AW 


Rit 


ue 





THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION 
OF JESUS 


Aon 
CS panty et 
ee pe th eae 


ey 
oa Khe 





CHAPTER I 


THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION 
OF JESUS 


THE RESURRECTION A SURPRISE 


HE resurrection of Jesus was one of the 
greatest surprises in the history of the 
world. In fact, it was such a great surprise 
that many men do not yet accept it as a fact. 
It was a surprise to the enemies of Jesus. 
They had taken precautions, not against his 
resurrection, but against his disciples’ stealing 
away the body of Jesus and putting out a false 
report that he had risen. They sealed the 
tomb with the seal of the Roman Empire and 
put a heavy guard around it to see that the 
disciples of Jesus played no trick on them 
(Matt. 27: 62-66). They recalled the state- 
ment of Jesus that he would rise from the dead. 
Perhaps they had seen enough of the impres- 
sive personality of Jesus and of his power over 
men to conjecture that it would not be so dif- 
ficult to get men to believe that such a man had 
risen from the dead. Perhaps there was a kind 


[138] 


14 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


of dumb consciousness on their part that it 
would be a moral anomaly for such a man’s 
career to come toanend. They may have felt, 
half-unconsciously, that death should not 
speak the last word concerning such a man. 

Anyway, they took precaution against his 
disciples’ getting out any false reports on the 
subject. There may have been something of 
the uneasiness in their hearts concerning Jesus 
that there was in the guilty conscience of 
Herod concerning John the Baptist. If only 
the dead would stay dead for those who dis- 
patch them! Somehow murdered kings have 
a way of coming back to Lady Macbeths. They 
won't stay out of the way when they are put 
out of the way. 

But in this case the crucified Lord did not 
come back to his murderers in a vision pro- 
duced by a guilty conscience; he came back in 
personal appearance to his friends and disci- 
ples. If only these enemies of Jesus had 
thought to take precaution against the power 
of God as well as against the trickery of the 
disciples! When a man sins, he always over- 
looks one factor in the situation; and unfor- 
tunately that factor happens to be the only 
one that counts in the long run—namely, God. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS bs. 


The resurrection of Jesus, however, was a 
surprise to the friends of Jesus as well as to 
his enemies. His disciples, when they came to 
believe in him as Messiah, expected him to re- 
main here and rule over Israel. The enthusi- 
asm of the people ran so high in this direction 
at one time that they were going to take him 
by force and make him a king (John 6: 15). 
Not even the most spiritually discerning of his 
followers thought he would fulfil his mission 
by death. When Jesus announced to them 
that he would die, the spokesman of the twelve 
dared to take him to task for it, and to tell 
him that such a thing could never be (Mark 
8: 31ff). 

If the disciples did not expect Jesus to die, 
much less did they expect him to rise after he 
died. When the women went to the tomb on 
the resurrection morning, they were saying, 
“Who shall roll us away the stoner” (Mark 
16: 3). They expected to find that stone 
there, and the tomb sealed and the body of 
Jesus within. The purpose of their visit was 
to anoint the body. But when they got there 
and found the stone rolled away and saw the 
“young man,” they were “amazed.” And 
when they heard the message about his being 


16 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


risen and were invited to look on the place 
where his body had lain, they fled in trembling 
and “‘astonishment” (Mark 16: 3-8). When 
the women reported these things to the apos- 
tles, their word appeared to these apostles as 
“idle talk,” and they disbelieved them (Luke 
24: 10,11). Peter then ran to the tomb (per- 
haps John with him, John 20: 1ff), stooped 
down, looked in and saw the “linen cloths by 
themselves,’ and departed to his house “won- 
dering at that which had come to pass” (Luke 
24: 12). That same day two of his disciples 
were going to a village named Emmaus. As 
they journeyed and talked about the recent 
happenings in Jerusalem, the unrecognized 
Christ joined them; and when he inquired what 
they were communing about, they told him 
about the strange providence of God that al- 
lowed the chief priests and rulers to crucify 
the “prophet mighty in deed and word before 
God and all the people.” Then they said, “We 
hoped” (Luke 24: 13ff). As much as to say, 
“Our hope is gone; it is a thing of the past.” 
The ruthless slaying of the mighty prophet. 
had dashed their hopes to pieces. But they 
went on to add, as if a faint gleam of new hope 
were beginning to appear in their hearts, that 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 17 


“certain women of our company amazed us” 
by going to the tomb early and coming back 
and reporting that they did not find his body 
and that they had seen a vision of angels who 
said that he was alive. 

So it is perfectly evident from the gospel 
accounts that the disciples did not expect Jesus 
to rise from the dead and that they were sur- 
prised when they discovered that he had. In 
fact, the word surprise is too mild to express 
it. They were astonished, amazed at the 
strange things happening around them. They 
could not grasp the situation. They seemed 
to be like men in a dream—seeing strange 
things and trying to grasp what it all meant. 

They should have been better ready to grasp 
this glorious fact of the resurrection of Jesus, 
because he had told them that it was coming. In 
view of the plain statements of Jesus before- 
hand that he would die and rise from the dead, 
it is a little strange that they seemed to be ut- 
terly unprepared for either his death or resur- 
rection. 

Some people would have us believe that 
Jesus never really foretold his death and resur- 
rection, but that the statements to the effect 
that he did are unhistorical, that these state- 


1S THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


ments got into the gospel accounts later on 
from those who had come to believe that he 
had died and risen and who were looking back 
on the events of his life through a haze that 
caused them to see things that really were not 
there. There are a number of things that would 
show this view of the matter to be wrong; but 
all that is necessary to say here is that, if one 
believes that Jesus did die and rise from the 
dead, he will not be apt to have much trouble 
with the statements that he foretold his death 
and resurrection. On the other hand, if he did 
not die and rise, there is nothing to Christianity 
any way and there is no need to go any fur- 
ther with the discussion. Jesus himself, when 
challenged by his enemies, staked all his 
claims on his future resurrection from the dead 
(Matt. 12: 38ff). 

But it is not at all impossible to understand 
how the disciples should have failed to expect 
Jesus to die and rise again even in the face of 
the fact that he had predicted that he would 
do so. For one thing, the idea of his death 
was always an unwelcome one to them and one 
that they would not for a moment entertain. 
In fact, it has been suggested, and perhaps 
with some justification from the gospel records, 


- THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 19 


that toward the end of his ministry there was 
a kind of coldness, .even estrangement, that 
grew up between Jesus and his disciples due 
to his insistence on the idea of his coming 
death. He was looking forward to his death 
and resurrection as the crowning event of his 
ministry, as the main thing for which he came 
into the world. They were expecting a tem- 
poral kingdom to be set up and scheming who 
should get the big places when it was set up. 
His conception and outlook for the kingdom 
were totally different from theirs. The main 
events therefore to which he was looking for- 
ward in founding the kingdom had no place in 
their conception of the matter. Consequently 
the idea of his death and resurrection could 
find no lodgment in their minds until these 
events took place before their eyes. Ideas that 
have no relation to other ideas already in our 
minds can not find a lodging there. Especially 
is this true if the new idea is one that is not 
wanted. When such an unwelcome idea comes 
into mind, it gets such a cool reception that it 
soon retires and seeks a more congenial atmos- 
phere. Getting the disciples of Jesus to wel- 
come the thought of his coming death was 
about like getting a Baptist to welcome the idea 


20 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


of infant baptism or getting a country deacon 
in Texas to believe in evolution. 

Jesus indicates that his disciples ought to 
have been prepared to expect his resurrection 
from their reading of the Old Testament (Luke 
24: 25, 26, 44ff). He saw the doctrine of the 
resurrection in these scriptures (Luke 20: 27- 
38 and parallels). God is not the God of dead 
men but of the living. But the disciples did 
not see the resurrection power of God in the 
Old Testament as Jesus did, nor did his pre- 
dictions of his own death and resurrection take 
hold of their minds and hearts. Hence when 
he died, they were utterly downcast and con- 
founded, and when he rose from the dead, they 
were astonished and amazed. It took them 
some time to adjust themselves to the new and 
strange situation. It was so much more glori- 
ous than anything they had anticipated that 
their whole mental lives had to be revolution- 
ized to allow for this new and glorious fact. 


THE CONVICTION OF THE DISCIPLES 


In spite of the fact, however, that the disci- 
ples were slow to believe in the resurrection of 
Jesus, it is evident from the New Testament 
that they did come to accept it as a fact. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS ai 


Evidently they accepted it because there was 
nothing else to do. They believed him alive 
from the dead, not because they expected it, but 
in spite of the fact that they did not expect it. 
It wholly misrepresents the situation to say 
that these disciples were looking for his resur- 
rection, that they were over-credulous concern- 
ing the matter, and that therefore they came 
to accept the idea that he had risen without 
sufficient evidence. The situation as we find 
it in the New Testament was exactly the oppo- 
site of this. They were not expecting him to 
rise; they were therefore slow to believe, but 
did come to believe because the evidence forced 
them to it. The other view is very plausible in a 
way; that is, one can easily imagine its taking 
place that way. But we need not deceive our- 
selves in regard to the matter. The fact that 
we can imagine that it might have taken place 
that way is no evidence that it did take place 
that way. We can imagine that a good many 
things might have taken place during the 
course of human history. But to imagine a 
thing taking place and to have evidence that it 
did take place are two different things alto- 
gether. And there is no evidence that the dis- 
ciples came to believe in the resurrection of 


22 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


Jesus by any such process as the one we are 
here considering. All the evidence in the New 
Testament is to the effect that they came to 
believe in the resurrection of Jesus because 
they had dependable evidence that he was alive 
from the dead. Anybody who advocates the 
other view gets it, not out of the New Testa- 
ment, but out of his own head. Now if a man 
wants to imagine a story like that and pass it 
off as an imaginary story, that is all right. He 
is entirely within his own rights in doing so. 
But nobody has a right to pass off such an 
imaginary story as that, without the slightest 
historical or rational evidence to support it, 
and expect other people to accept it as an ac- 
count of facts. 

What was it then that caused the disciples 
to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead? 
That question can quickly be answered. It was 
because he appeared to them. He manifested 
himself alive. They did not witness the resur- 
rection, but they did see the risen Christ. They 
knew that he was alive in the same way that 
one to-day knows that his neighbor, or his 
wife and children are alive. One knows as a 
matter of experience, by the testimony of the 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 23 


senses and by personal communication with 
the living. 

Jesus appeared to them one at a time and in 
groups. He appeared to Mary (John 20: 16), 
tometer (1 Cor. 152.5), to James, (1: Cor, 15: 
7), to the two on the way to Emmaus (Luke 
24: 13ff), to ten of the apostles (John 20: 
19ff), to all of the eleven apostles (John 20: 
26ff), to seven on the Sea of Galilee (John 
21: 1ff), toa group on the mountain in Galilee, 
possibly five hundred of them (Matt. 28: 16ff; 
1 Cor. 15: 6). There may have been other 
appearances, besides the one to Saul, to be 
discussed later. These show, however, that 
he appeared under different circumstances and 
often enough that it could not have been a 
matter of illusion. They saw him, were in- 
vited to touch him (Luke 24: 39), heard his 
words. They record for us definite instruc- 
tion that he gave them (Luke 24: 25ff, 44ff; 
Matt. 28: 16ff, ef al.). 

Much has been made at times of the dif- 
ferences in the accounts of the four Gospels 
in recording these appearances. Whatever 
else may be said about it, the differences show 
that we have here independent accounts. One 
account does not slavishly copy or reproduce 


24 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


another. This greatly enhances the value of 
the testimony. If we had one writer slavishly 
and mechanically copying or reproducing an- 
other, that would cast suspicion on their testi- 
mony. The writers do not appear as men 
afraid their accounts will not be accepted. In 
fact, they do not seem to be thinking so much 
about that as they do about recording the facts 
that they have seen and experienced. And all 
the accounts do agree on the main thing; 
namely, that Jesus abundantly manifested him- 
self alive from the dead. When we are listen- 
ing to witnesses, what we expect of good wit- 
nesses is not that they shall agree in all de- 
tails, but that they agree on the main points 
at issue. And all the Gospels bear witness to 
the fact that Jesus gave to his disciples con- 
vincing evidence that he was alive from the 
dead. Practically everybody to-day admits 
that the disciples believed that Jesus rose. 
There is no satisfactory way of explaining how 
they came to believe this except on the sup- 
position that he manifested himself in convinc- 
ing evidence to their unexpecting and there- 
fore skeptical minds. 


25 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE DISCIPLES 


Another factor in the evidence that Jesus 
rose is the change that came over the disciples 
when they came to accept the fact of his resur- 
rection. They came to believe that he was alive 
and this belief wrought a revolution in their 
lives. They were altogether different men after 
they realized that their Lord had risen from 
the dead. These men who had their hopes all 
dashed to pieces and who had consequently 
been utterly disheartened by the death of Jesus, 
after a little while became as brave as lions 
and went out in Jerusalem and proclaimed the 
resurrection of Jesus with such boldness and 
power that thousands of people, doubtless in- 
cluding many of his enemies, accepted their 
message and believed in Jesus as the living and 
ascended Christ. These men bore testimony 
to the resurrection when their testimony meant 
social ostracism, the loss of worldly goods and 
sometimes of life itself. What gave them their 
confidence and boldness in proclaiming this 
message? What made them so persistent in 
their testimony? What gave their testimony 
such power with the people? Were they be- 
side themselves? What gave their message 
such transforming power in the lives of men? 


26 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


Was all this simply the result of a psycholog- 
ical situation? What produced such a psycho- 
logical situation P 

With the enemies of Jesus absolutely in con- 
trol of the situation in Jerusalem, with Jesus 
himself out of the way, with his handful of 
discouraged disciples utterly disappointed and 
broken in spirit, will somebody please tell us 
how a psychological situation could arise such 
as we See in the early chapters of Acts? How 
could these few discouraged disciples suddenly 
become so transformed as to proclaim the 
resurrection in such power as to win thousands 
of hostile men and so as to produce consterna- 
tion in the ranks of the enemy? 

If we admit the resurrection as a fact, then 
all is accounted for. If Jesus rose from the 
dead and manifested himself to his disciples, 
we can understand how they came to believe 
him alive, how they were transformed, how 
they bore witness to the resurrection in such 
power as to convince multitudes of others. But 
on any other assumption the whole situation 
remains unexplained and can not be explained. 


THE TESTIMONY OF PAUL 


There is another evidence from the New 
Testament for the resurrection of Jesus that 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS rot 


demands attention. It is the conversion and 
career of Paul. It is not necessary to review 
here the facts of Paul’s life. It is sufficient to 
say that he started out as a bitter persecutor 
of the church. All at once he changed and 
became the greatest preacher and advocate of 
Christianity that the world has ever seen. Let 
us ask ourselves the question: What changed 
Saul of Tarsus from the bitter persecutor of 
Christianity to its ablest advocate and most 
enthusiastic propagandist? Many answers 
have been proposed to this question. But in 
reality there is only one answer. That is the 
answer that Paul himself has given. He says 
that he was changed by the appearance to him 
of Jesus alive from the dead (1 Cor. 9: 1; 15: 
8; Acts 9: 3-8; 22: 6-11; 26: 12-18). Paul 
testifies definitely to the fact that Jesus ap- 
peared to him. He gives us this testimony in 
a book (1 Corinthians) that practically all 
critics, conservative and liberal, admit came 
from the hand of Paul before 60 A.D. 

What shall we say about his testimony? For 
one thing practically nobody would deny his 
sincerity. His sacrificial life and intense ear- 
nestness would forbid the idea that Paul was 
insincere. He took his religion seriously. He 


28 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


did this before his conversion. When he was 
convinced that this new sect was wrong and 
ought to be stopped, he went to work to stop 
it. And when he became convinced that the 
Christians were right, he did not hesitate to 
cast in his lot with them, though it meant a 
life of suffering and hardship and the loss of 
all that a Jew counted dear in life. 

Nor could anyone say that Paul was men- 
tally unbalanced. His writings are too sane, 
manifest too much mental poise and sound in- 
telligence for that. Paul was an enthusiast, 
but not a fanatical one. Fanaticism lacks the 
element of sanity and mental poise. This man 
Paul is too well known as a sane, intelligent 
thinker and constructive worker to call him a 
fanatic. Any man would impeach his own in- 
telligence who accused Paul of lack of intelli- 
gence or Sanity. 

But if Paul was sincere and mentally poised, 
what shall we say of his testimony to the ef- 
fect that Jesus changed him by appearing to 
him alive from the dead? We should here 
remember also that the living Christ was the 
center and inspiration of Paul’s life. It is not 
simply a question of Paul’s testimony to a de- 
tached event. But it is a question of an event 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 29 


that revolutionized a great life. It is also a 
question of the inspiration and sustaining 
power of that life—a life of incessant and 
arduous labors and sacrificial and unselfish 
service to God and man. Paul testifies that 
the living Christ appeared to him, changed the 
course of his life and guided and sustained him 
in all his labors. Jesus and the resurrection 
were central in his message (1 Cor. 15, ef al). 
Christ became so real to him and so dynamic 
in his life that he could say, “For me to live 
is Christ” (Phil. 1: 21). 

Now was Paul mistaken about all this P Did 
he see Jesus? Was the Christ with whom he 
believed himself in spiritual communion only 
an illusion? Do men get inspiration for lives 
of sustained and heroic self-sacrifice from dis- 
eased and over-heated imaginations P 

We maintain that there is no rational way 
to account for Paul’s conversion and career 
other than the way in which Paul himself ex- 
plains it; namely, that he was arrested in his 
mad career of persecuting the Christians by 
the appearance to him of the living Christ, and 
that from his conversion on he lived in spir- 
itual fellowship with this living Christ who 
was the inspiration and power of his life. We 


30 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


challenge anybody to give any other rational 
explanation of the conversion and career of 
Paul. Moreover, we affirm that there is no 
other explanation. Paul’s explanation meets 
every requirement in the situation and accounts 
for all the facts. No other hypothesis does 
account for the facts. If Jesus rose from the 
dead, Paul is accounted for. Otherwise, Paul 
is a hopeless enigma. Of course, if we accept 
Paul’s account, we must believe in a super- 
natural Christianity. But to believe in a su- 
pernatural Christianity is more rational than 
to believe in a world in which a career like 
Paul’s could come uncaused and remain for- 
ever a hopeless riddle. 


FELLOWSHIP WITH THE LIVING CHRIST 


Jesus Christ has transformed the lives of 
hundreds and thousands as he transformed 
Paul. He has uplifted nations and trans- 
formed civilizations. No parallel to his up- 
lifting and transforming power can be found 
in history. A unique effect must have a unique 
cause. The only adequate cause, the only 
cause that really explains the influence and 
power of Christ in the world, is the living 
Christ. This can be shown more definitely by 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 31 


keeping in mind that this uplifting and trans- 
forming process is inseparable from two things. 
One is the proclamation of Jesus as risen Re- 
deemer and Saviour from sin. One may 
preach and teach anything else in the world 
than Jesus as the crucified and risen Saviour 
of sinners and no such results follow in human 
life. Let those who believe that an atoning 
and risen Christ is not essential to Christianity 
produce results corresponding to those being 
produced in every mission field of the world 
by evangelical Christianity ; then it will be time 
enough to consider seriously reducing Chris- 
tianity to some system of ethics or philosophy 
that leaves out the cross and the empty tomb. 

But to secure such results not only must 
Christ be proclaimed as risen, he must be be- 
lieved in as the Redeemer who conquered sin 
and death in the resurrection. Believing in 
him merely as teacher and example will not 
produce such results, nor will believing in any 
other person or truth. 

To put the matter a little differently, there is 
nothing that uplifts and transforms men like 
fellowship with the living Christ. To live, by 
faith, in communion with him as the living 
Lord, triumphant over sin and death, lifts men 


32 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


up out of themselves, their littleness, their sins 
and sordidness as nothing else does. This 
fact constitutes a valuable, an indispensable 
element in the evidence for the resurrection of 
Jesus. Our fellowship with him is based on 
the resurrection, and, on the other hand, our 
fellowship with Christ is assurance of his 
resurrection. We could not have living com- 
munion with a dead Christ. If he be not risen, 
he could have no power in our lives except a 
post mortem influence. But the power of 
Christ in the lives of men is not simply the in- 
fluence of a dead man—the uplifting power of 
his example and his teachings; it is the trans- 
forming power of a living but unseen person- 
ality. It moves on a different plane altogether 
from the influence of a dead man, such as 
Napoleon, Washington or Lincoln. It is a 
unique fact in the history and experience of 
mankind, and unique facts, when clearly es- 
tablished as facts, must be given unique ex- 
planation, must be referred to unique causes. 
Such a unique explanation is found in the 
resurrection of Jesus. To reject the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus on the ground that it is excep- 
tional might be a rational procedure if it were 
not for the fact that there is a whole series of 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 33 


facts following the resurrection, and vitally 
linked up with it, that would be left without 
explanation. But since we have this series of 
facts connected with the resurrection and de- 
pendent directly on it, it would be irrational 
to reject the resurrection and leave these facts 
unexplained. 

Some people, too, object to the idea of fel- 
lowship with the living Christ on the ground 
that such an experience is mystical and that 
mysticism can not be admitted. By this is not 
meant mystical in the sense of mysterious, dif- 
ficult to understand, but mystical in the sense 
of direct and conscious contact of the soul with 
the divine. But there is no use for one to ob- 
ject to a fact on the ground that his philosoph- 
ical assumptions will not allow the fact to be. 
If a fact does not agree with our assumptions 
or prejudices, then so much the worse for our 
assumptions. We can not change a fact sim- 
ply by denying it the right to be. That is the 
method of Eddyism. But Mrs. Eddy and her 
followers are not the only people in the history 
of the world who have tried to get rid of un- 
welcome facts by denying them the right to 
exist. 


34 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


Christian mysticism is a fact. Conversion 
and communion with God in Christ are facts, 
and there is no use to deny them. But the 
objector may say that he is not denying the fact 
of conversion or even of some kind of mystical 
experience, but that he denies the Christian’s 
explanation of these; that is, the objector de- 
nies that the Christian has feesieee with the 
living Christ. 

But in answer to this we would ask: How is 
a normal and repeated conscious experience to 
be understood? Is it best understood from the 
point of view of the consciousness of the one 
having the experience or from the point of 
view of one who does not have it? Who is 
most likely to understand and be able to ex- 
plain an experience, the man who has the ex- 
perience or the man who does not? Who can 
best understand what is involved in the experi- 
ence of seeing, the man who sees or the blind 
man incapable of seeing? Any experience that 
becomes so normal and regular in human ex- 
perience that it can be reduced to order is to be 
understood in terms of the laws that govern the 
experience. The fact that there are laws that 
govern the experience is the thing that makes 
it a norma! experience. An experience that is 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 35 


irregular, spasmodic, not subject to discover- 
able law, nor to control, is considered abnor- 
mal. Here is the difference between the mental 
and moral life of an insane man and a sane one. 

What has just been said means that any 
normal experience is to be understood in terms 
of that experience, not in terms of some other 
experience. A certain realm of experience is 
in that sense to be subject to home rule, not to 
foreign domination. 

If we apply this principle to Christian ex- 
perience, it means that Christian experience is 
not to be interpreted in terms of physical or 
biological science. Faith that deals with the 
unseen or spiritual world has its own laws and 
is not to be subject to the domination of science, 
in the sense of physical science. And the ob- 
jection to Christian experience on the ground 
that it is mystical usually has its foundation 
in unreasoning prejudice against any reality 
that cannot be interpreted in terms of the phy- 
sical or biological sciences, or in terms of nat- 
uralism. 

The laws then that govern the Christian’s 
fellowship with the living Christ would likely 
furnish the best key to the interpretation of 
that experience. Can one discover any such 


36 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


laws? Yes. As stated above, one of them is 
that such an experience comes only in connec- 
tion with a knowledge of Christ as crucified 
and risen Redeemer, and faith or trust in him 
as such a Redeemer. Here you have both the 
objective and subjective factors necessary to 
knowledge in any realm: you have the univer- 
sal subject-object relation. Under no other 
conditions do you have this experience. More- 
over, where you have these conditions, you 
do have universally, in characteristic form, this 
experience. Besides, in proportion as these 
conditions fade out and disappear you have 
the corresponding disappearance of this ex- 
perience. You may have all sorts of factors 
entering into Christianity, but so long as you 
have these factors present—proclamation of 
Christ as crucified and risen Redeemer and 
faith in him as such—so long does this char- 
acteristic Christian experience remain. But 
when factors enter in that obscure or destroy 
these factors, then the characteristic Christian 
experience is obscured or disappears. 

This, it seems to me, amounts to a demon- 
stration that Christ as the living Saviour is the 
cause and explanation of the Christian’s ex- 
perience of conversion and of fellowship with 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS o7 


God. It seems that one will have to deny the 
fact or admit the Christian’s explanation of the 
fact. 

The Christian’s fellowship with the living 
Christ then carries with it the conclusion that 
Christ rose from the dead. 


CONCLUSION 


Jesus rose from the dead. This is one of 
the foundation facts of Christianity. Without 
this fact, there could be no Christianity. This 
idea of the resurrection of Jesus is set forth 
every time Christians meet on the Lord’s day, 
the first day of the week, to worship God in 
the name of Jesus. We do not celebrate the 
resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday alone. 
Every Sunday is Easter for the Christian. 
Every return of the first day of the week re- 
minds us that Jesus is alive. We keep no 
Jewish Sabbath as devotees of Mosaic legal- 
ism; we celebrate on the Lord’s day the tri- 
umph of the Saviour over sin and the grave, 
giving us freedom from legalism through the 
conquering grace of God. The very existence 
of a Christian church as the body of Christ 
involves his living as the animating power and 
presence of the body. The ordinance of 


38 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


baptism is a constant testimony, not only to his 
atoning death, but also to his triumphant resur- 
rection from the dead. “Behold, I am alive 
for evermore, and I have the keys of death and 
of Hades” (Rev. 1:18, Am. Rev.). 


THE NATURE OF THE RESURRECTION 





CHAPTER II 
THE NATURE OF THE RESURRECTION! 


F the resurrection of Jesus is to be accepted 
as a fact, the next question of interest to 
us would be: What kind of a transaction was 
itP Just what was it that took place in the 
resurrection P 

Certainly this is a question that any man 
would want to approach with caution. No- 
body with any sense of his own limitations or 
any consciousness of the greatness of the 
world in which he lives or of the God who rules 
the world would care to rush into the discus- 
sion of this question with a cock-sure answer 
to all its problems. 

Yet it is a question that we would not and 
cannot avoid. We inevitably face it when we 
begin to think on the question of the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus. 





*On this topic compare, ‘“‘The Resurrection Body,’ by Dr. 
Wilbur W. White, published by the Doran Co.—a book that 
came to my hands after this chapter was written. 


[41] 


42 
THE EMPTY TOMB 


A number of people to-day are inciined to 
deny the resurrection of the body of Jesus. 
I do not mean those who deny a future life 
altogether, those who look on death as the end 
of all things, nor those who deny that we can 
have any knowledge of life beyond death, or 
any rational basis for hope concerning such 
a life—not outright materialists nor agnostics 
in their view of life. There is an increasing 
number perhaps who, while they do not dog- 
matically deny the bodily resurrection of Je- 
sus, are skeptical about it, and say that they 
do not regard it as essential to Christianity. 
These people either deny outright, or are 
skeptical in regard to miracles in the physical 
realm. They accordingly interpret the resur- 
rection of Jesus to mean the persistence of his 
personality beyond death. Somehow, they 
hold, he succeeded in communicating with his 
disciples and thus assured them that he lived 
on in spite of death, that he transcended death 
and its power. Those who take this position 
do not deny all value to the evidence for the 
resurrection of Jesus as given in the Gospels, 
but they seem to think that these early Chris- 
tians confused the spiritual and physical and 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 43 


that the evidence for the bodily resurrection of 
Jesus is inconclusive. In some cases, it seems 
to me, they do not squarely face the question 
as to the value of the evidence for the bodily 
resurrection of Jesus. 

I would not care to say that such a view is 
entirely without value or comfort. It would 
be worth something to believe that Jesus in 
his spiritual personality lived on after death. 
But we are interested, first of all, in what the 
facts indicate; and there are many things in 
the New Testament that point clearly in the 
direction of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. 
And on the basis of the evidence given in the 
New Testament I maintain that the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus included the raising of his body 
from the dead. 

On the morning of the resurrection, when 
the women came to the tomb, they found the 
stone rolled away and the tomb empty (Luke 
24: 2, 3). They were invited to look on the 
place where the body had lain (Mark 16: 6). 
When Peter and “‘the other disciple’ went to 
the tomb they also found it empty (John 20: 
2ff). They entered the tomb and saw the 
linen cloths lying to one side, but the body of 
Jesus was not there. That is really the first 


44 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


capital point made by the gospel writers with 
reference to the matter: the body of Jesus was 
gone, Joseph’s tomb was empty. 

Another thing is that they saw Jesus (Mark 
16: 11, John 20: 18, 1 Cor. 9: 1, et al) ; they 
heard his words (Matt. 28: 18-20, Luke 24: 
17, 25ff, et al) ; they touched him (Matt. 28: 
9); he ate before them (Luke 24: 43). It is 
true that they did not readily recognize him 
(Luke 24: 16ff, John 21: 4, et al); that he 
passed through closed doors (John 20: 19 
ff, 26) ; and seemed to vanish from their sight 
at times, perhaps at will (Luke 24: 31). 

Some would solve this problem by denying 
the reliability of the records on some of these 
points. They would regard some of the state- 
ments about his eating and about the disciples’ 
touching Jesus as “unconscious materializa- 
tions.” But if this were granted, you still have 
the other passages in which Jesus is seen and 
heard, and the emphasis placed by the records 
(for they do seem to emphasize it) that the 
tomb was empty. We cannot, therefore, get 
rid of the idea of the resurrection of the body 
of Jesus by eliminating one or two passages; 
to get rid of this idea we would have to re- 
construct the whole story. It is plain on the 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 45 


surface of the gospel accounts that the body 
of Jesus was not to be found by the disciples 
of Jesus. Moreover, it might be remarked 
that the method of solving a problem like this 
by eliminating those statements in the records 
that do not agree with our notions of what hap- 
pened is too easy a method and hardly seems 
a fair way to deal with the records. Unless 
there are other reasons for eliminating such 
statements, we had better try to find some 
other way out of our difficulty. 

The old question that has been so often 
asked, but never answered, is still calling for 
answer. If the body of Jesus did not rise from 
the dead, then what became of itP Did the 
disciples get possession of it and conceal it? 
How could they get possession of it when the 
tomb was sealed with the seal of the Roman 
government and guarded by Roman soldiers ? 
Besides, if they could have got possession of 
the body, what motive could they have had 
for concealing it and then trying to deceive 
others in regard to the matter? They were 
utterly dispirited and downcast. There was 
no conceivable reason why they, at the risk of 
their lives, should practice a fraud and publish 
a deliberate lie in regard to the matter. They 


46 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


had everything to lose and nothing to gain 
by such a course. The very idea is prepos- 
terous. | 

The body of Jesus then did not pass into the 
hands of his disciples. If his body was not 
raised from the dead, it follows that it re- 
mained in the hands of his enemies. But when 
the disciples began to testify that Jesus had 
risen from the dead, why did not his enemies 
produce the dead body and settle the whole 
controversy ? That would have settled the mat- 
ter. The resurrection of Jesus was the main 
element in the preaching of the first Chris- 
tians. Their testimony could have been re- 
futed once for all by producing the body of 
Jesus. Surely the people who put Jesus to 
death and’ who had charge of his body were 
the biggest simpletons the world ever saw in 
a situation like that if they never thought of 
stopping the whole movement by bringing to 
view the dead body of Jesus. Why did they 
not do it? There is only one answer: it was 
not in their possession. And the disciples did 
not have it. There was no conceivable rea- 
son why they should work themselves up into 
a fanatical frenzy and seek to deceive the 
world by hiding the body of Jesus and 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 47 


reporting that he had risen. Besides, they 
could not have got possession of the body if 
they had desired. 

There is only one conclusion that the facts 
will allow. The body of Jesus rose from the 
dead. The tomb was empty. The body could 
not be accounted for. His body revived and 
came out of the tomb and was seen by the 
disciples. 


THE RESURRECTION MORE THAN RESUSCITATION 


But while the New Testament records de- 
mand a belief in the resurrection of the body 
of Jesus, these same records forbid the idea 
that the resurrection was simply a resuscita- 
tion of his body. It was not the restoration 
of Jesus to the natural plane of life. His body 
was not raised as a body of flesh and blood, 
subject to death and decay. While it is not 
distinctly stated, yet it is likely that the peo- 
ple whom Jesus raised from the dead during 
his earthly life were raised back to the natural 
plane, with bodies of flesh and blood, to die 
again as all men die. It was not that kind of 
a resurrection that Jesus had. It was some- 
thing more significant and glorious for both 
himself and for us. 


48 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


While, as previously stated, then, the New 
Testament makes it clear that the body of Je- 
sus rose from the dead, still the significance 
of his resurrection does not lie primarily or 
mainly in the physical or natural realm. The 
significance of his resurrection lies mainly in 
the spiritual realm. His body, in the resur- 
rection, was transformed and glorified. After 
the resurrection, it seemed to have powers 
transcending the ordinary powers or laws of 
matter. He was so changed that he did not 
seem to be easily recognizable even by his 
disciples. He seemed to have the power to 
appear and vanish at will, and to go tars 
closed doors. 

Some one has suggested that this process of 
transformation was not completed until the 
ascension. That is not at all impossible and 
may be true. If so, it would help to relieve 
the difficulty about his body’s having in it, af- 
ter the resurrection, the wounds in the hands 
and side and about his eating with his disciples. 
Be that as it may, there will likely be some 
difficulties remaining with any view. I am not 
expecting to work out any view, nor to find 
any worked out by anybody else, that will re- 
lieve all the difficulties. I am inclined to think 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 49 


that the realities of life and experience are too 
great and glorious to be entirely comprehended 
in any of our explanations. For that reason 
Iam always suspicious of theories that explain 
everything. Such theories usually explain by 
eliminating some of the facts. They simplify 
by flattening things out too much. Often- 
times they eliminate the most glorious facts 
of life and leave us those that are least mean- 
ingful and inspiring. 


DANGER OF SIMPLIFYING THE FACTS 


One such process of oversimplification is to 
reduce the meaning of the resurrection of Je- 
sus to a belief in his spiritual immortality. The 
facts do not seem to be satisfied with such an 
explanation. They seem to require that we 
believe in the resurrection of the body of Je- 
sus from the tomb. 

On the other hand, it is just as much a mat- 
ter of oversimplification if we regard the resur- 
rection as being the revivifying of his body and 
raising it to the natural plane of life. Nor 
was it simply giving him back a body of flesh 
and blood, but not subject to death in the fu- 
ture. His body evidently had higher powers 
and capacities than it had before. And this 


50 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


probably applied to his whole personality. His 
resurrection might appropriately be spoken of 
as the rebirth of his whole personality on a 
higher plane—a plane transcending the pres- 
ent order of things. 


SEEN ONLY BY DISCIPLES 

This may account for the fact that Jesus, 
after the resurrection, did not manifest him- 
self to the world generally. There is no record, 
so far as I recall, that Jesus, after rising from 
the dead, manifested himself to any except his 
own disciples and friends. He appeared “not 
to all the people, but unto witnesses that were 
chosen before of God.’’ So testified one of 
these chosen witnesses, even the leader among 
them (Acts 10: 41). This fact has appeared 
to some people to throw suspicion on the value 
of the evidence for the resurrection. If God 
raised him from the dead, and wanted all men 
to believe in him as alive from the dead, why 
did he not have Christ appear to all menP 
Why did he not appear to his enemies, to the 
chief priests, to Pontius Pilate, yea, to the 
whole world, and let all men know that he was — 
alive from the dead P 

This objection overlooks the fact that the 
resurrection of Jesus was more than the resus- 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS Sl 


citation of a dead body. The significance of 
his resurrection lies mainly in the spiritual 
realm. He did not rise simply to live endlessly 
on the same plane as before. The old life was 
transcended. For a man to see anything more 
in the resurrection of Jesus than the resuscita- 
tion of a dead body that man must have spir- 
itual perception; he must be able to see in Je- 
sus the risen Lord of glory, and it takes more 
than physical vision to see him thus. 

We might look at the matter from either 
side—the side of Jesus or the side of the wit- 
ness. From the side of Jesus it is possible 
that the resurrection had wrought such a 
change in him that physical eyes alone could 
not see him. Perhaps this would help to ac- 
count for the fact that the disciples were so 
slow in recognizing Jesus at times. Then again 
on the side of the witness we must remember 
that, granting that men could have seen him 
with physical eyes alone, yet it takes more 
than witnessing physical miracles to produce 
moral and spiritual results. Many of these 
people had seen the miracles of Jesus; yet they 
would not believe. They had seen Lazarus, 
whom Jesus had raised from the dead; but 
the only result produced with some of them 


we THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


was to infuriate them so that they plotted to 
put both Jesus and Lazarus to death (John 
12: 10, 11). Spiritual results are not easily 
produced. Perhaps if he could have mani- 
fested himself to some of these people they 
would have been ready to try to put him to 
death again. If they hear not Moses and the 
prophets, neither will they be persuaded, if 
one rise from the dead (Luke 16: 31). The 
resurrection of Jesus was a fact whose signifi- 
cance lay primarily in the moral and spiritual 
realm rather than in the physical. It is en- 
tirely possible, therefore, that to see him after 
the resurrection required more than physical 
eyes. Be that as it may, it is certain that to 
see him with only physical eyes would have 
produced no moral and spiritual results. The 
only man, other than a disciple, to whom Je- 
Sus appeared, so far as definite record goes, 
was Saul of Tarsus, and in Saul’s case he be- 
came a disciple at once because he saw Jesus 
with more than physical vision. 

We might repeat then that the resurrection 
of Jesus included the raising of his body from 
the grave, but it was much more than the 
reviving of his body and bringing it back 
to.the natural plane of life. It was the raising 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 30 


of his whole personality to a higher plane of 
being. Death was the gateway by means of 
which he entered upon a larger and more glori- 
ous life. In thinking of this, we must remem- 
ber that the resurrection was followed by the 
ascension. His resurrection and ascension 
were parts of one transaction. Some other 
phases of this matter (bearing on the nature. 
of the resurrection) will come out in the dis- 
cussion of the significance of the resurrection. 
We will, therefore, devote the rest of our space 
to the significance of the resurrection of Je- 
sus. What is its meaning for us and for the 
world? 





THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESUR- 
RECTION OF JESUS FOR OUR 
VIEW OF GOD 





CHAPTER III 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURREC- 
TION FOR OUR VIEW OF GOD 


S there a God? If so, what kind of a God 

is heP These are questions of prime im- 
portance for man. If the question, Is there a 
God? be answered in the negative, then it 
makes little difference how any other question 
is answered. Some men insist that this ques- 
tion, as well as all others, shall be investigated 
in a spirit of cold-blooded indifference with ref- 
erence to the outcome. I should rather say 
that any man who comes to this question in 
such a spirit thereby shows that he has no ap- 
preciation of the significance of the question 
and is consequently foredoomed to failure in 
his investigation. No man can succeed in ar- 
riving at truth in regard to moral and spiritual 
questions who does not have an appreciation 
of the tremendous importance of the questions 
he is dealing with. Such an appreciation is 


[ 57] 


58 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


necessary to spiritual insight, and spiritual 
insight is the prime qualification for knowing 
Spiritual truth. A recent writer has well said: 
‘That state of mental equilibrium which we so 
often praise as being impartial and free from 
bias is unsuited to the investigation of the sig- 
nificance of life.’’? 

The second question is of scarcely less im- 
portance than the first. If there is a God, what 
kind of a God is he? Everything in human 
life depends on the answer to these two ques- 
tions. In all ages of the world, men have ap- 
proached these questions in every conceivable 
way and have arrived at all sorts of conclu- 
sions. The best minds of the race have given 
their most concentrated and prolonged atten- 
tion to the idea of God. It is a question that 
men cannot let alone and would not if they 
could. They cannot let it alone, because it will 
not let them alone. The question of God is 
much more fundamental and important, more 
all-persuasive in interest for mankind than the 
questions of government, industry, and society. 
The condition of the stock market or the state 
of the weather are of temporary interest, but 





““Must We Part With God?” by Ernest F. Champness, pub- 
lished by The MacMillan Co. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 59 


the question of God is permanent. The stock 
market may be bad to-day, but it will improve 
tomorrow. The weather may be foul to-day, 
but it will be fair tomorrow. But if there is 
no God, or if he is not good in character, then 
nothing can ever be any better. In fact, if 
there is no God, then there is no good or bad, 
no better or worse. Everything is just blind 
fact without meaning or value. 

Our question in this chapter is: What is the 
significance of the resurrection of Jesus for our 
view of God? What bearing does it have on 
our idea of God? One does not have to think 
on the question very long before he sees that 
it means everything for our conception of God. 

In discussing the significance of the resur- 
rection of Jesus for our view of God, it will 
be understood, of course, that there is no in- 
tention of minimizing the other factors in the 
life of Jesus, for instance, the teaching of Je- 
sus concerning God. But it is meant that, tak- 
ing these other factors for granted, we shall 
think about the significance of his resurrection. 
Furthermore, we will remember that it is the 
meaning of the resurrection of Jesus that we 
are considering. The same Jesus who gave us 
such comforting and meaningful words about 


60 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


the heavenly Father is the same Jesus who 
rose from the dead. What is the meaning of 
his resurrection for our view of God? 


GOD A FACT 


Jesus rose from the dead. That fact takes 
God out of the realm of speculation and theory 
and brings him down into the realm of history 
and of fact. Men have employed their keenest 
thought and most subtle arguments to validate 
the idea of God. Doubtless much of their ar- 
gument has been valid and much of it faulty. 
There is no disposition on the part of the writer 
to deny the value of these efforts. These argu- 
ments have shown, to say the least of it, that 
the idea of God is an idea intellectually re- 
spectable in any company. So far as intel- 
lectual standing is concerned, no man need 
apologize for believing in God. The idea of 
God is able to stand its ground among the great 
ideas of the mind. 

But the idea of God arrived at by means of 
a process of reasoning is often in a state of un- 
stable equilibrium. What argument estab- 
lishes argument can often overthrow. There 
are systems of thought other than theism that 
can claim great intellectual respectability and 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 61 


strength. Many people have often clung to 
their faith in God in spite of the intellectual 
difficulties rather than because of the strength 
of the arguments for theism. This is not to 
say that belief in God is irrational, but rather 
that many people, in spite of intellectual con- 
fusion on this subject and in spite of arguments 
the subtlety of which they could not penetrate, 
have been guided by their hearts and con- 
sciences and have held on to God. In fact, it 
is doubtful if very many people have ever 
come to believe in God because of the cogency 
of the intellectual arguments for God. These 
arguments have rather been used to validate a 
belief in God that men already had; they have 
been used to clarify already existing faith. Men 
have probably believed in God more because 
their moral nature called for God than be- 
cause intellectual considerations demanded 
such belief. Many people have been like the 
old lady who said to her pastor, after he had 
preached a learned and eloquent sermon to 
prove the existence of God: “Pastor, I still be- 
lieve in God, in spite of all your argument.” 
Moreover, men need that God shall be more 
than an idea to them. The idea of God may 
be validated as a factor in an intellectual 


62 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


system, but a bare intellectual idea of God will 
have little vitality and power in the lives of 
men. God should be more than a conclusion 
at the end of a syllogism; he should be a living 
power. For God to be such a living power in 
the lives of men he must reveal himself in the 
world of objective fact. Man’s life is not a life 
of mere intellectual contemplation nor of bare 
inner, mystical experience. It is first of all a 
life related to an objective social order. Man 
is a factor in such an order and is utterly de- 
pendent on it. This is true of man’s religious 
life as well as of any other phase of his life. 
The power and persistence of idolatry testify 
to man’s need of a concrete, historical revela- 
tion of God. The doctrine of God, apart from 
such a revelation in the objective world, will 
no more meet man’s religious need than the 
idea of bread will satisfy his physical hunger. 

Such a revelation of God we have in Jesus 
Christ. He came into the world in obedience 
to the Father (John 3: 17; 5: 36, 38, et al); 
he was the embodiment of God’s love and life, 
so that he was the revelation of God (John 1: 
18, et al) ; he died on the cross in obedience to 
God (Phil. 2: 8, et al) ; God raised him from 
the dead (Rom. 8: 11, et al). His resurrec- 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 63 


tion, therefore, was the act of God. He was 
crucified at the hands of wicked men. God 
intervened on his behalf. He had lived such 
a life as no other man had ever lived—a life 
wholly given up to the will of God and unre- 
servedly devoted to the service of mankind. 
For such a man, yea, for the sinless Son of 
God, to die at the hands of wicked men made 
his death the supreme crisis in the history of 
the world. Such a deed was a challenge to 
God himself. And God did not decline the 
challenge. He accepted it and showed his 
hand. He entered the lists and showed him- 
self God in the realm of history and of objec- 
tive fact. The resurrection was God’s deed; 
it was a deed of triumph over wicked and god- 
less men. God’s voice rang out in this supreme 
crisis of the world saying in very deed that sin 
and hatred, superstition and darkness should 
not rule the world. Many times God seems 
to be silent in great crises. He seems not to 
care while right is being crucified and wrong 
is on the throne. But for God to remain silent 
and inactive at this supreme crisis would have 
been too much. It is difficult to see how there 
could have been any God; a God who would 
not have intervened now (Is it too much to 


64 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


say it?) would have abdicated his throne. He 
would have resigned in favor of the forces of 
evil. In that case the devil would have been 
God over the world; he would have been su- 
preme with an unchallenged supremacy. 

No, God did not remain silent and inactive. 
He spoke a word that sent terror to the very 
depths of hell, a word that meant the over- 
throw of sin and Satan. Wrong should not, 
could not, go thus unrebuked. God must 
speak; and he did. He spoke a word that was 
unmistakable in its meaning. 

The resurrection of Jesus thus gives us a 
God revealed in the realm of objective fact. 
No man can believe in the resurrection of Je- 
sus and not believe in God. If we accept the 
resurrection of Jesus, God is for us no longer 
a problem of thought; he is a datum of his- 
tory. Instead of being a problem of thought 
he is the one fact who solves, or will solve, all 
the problems of history and of experience. I 
do not mean by this that we get an immediate 
intellectual solution for the moral and spiritual 
problems of life; I mean rather that we have 
God as a datum of history and experience and 
that we can trust him to straighten out all the 
tangled skeins of history and experience. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 65 


As Jesus faced the situation on the night be- 
fore the crucifixion, he invited his disciples to 
believe in God and believe in himself (John 
14: 1). Ina few hours, he was in the hands 
of his enemies and in a few more he was on 
the cross. Then he was dead. All their hopes 
were gone. The darkness of despair hung 
over them. Surely men never faced a more 
hopeless situation. All was lost. But God 
intervened and turned defeat into victory. And 
if God could come out victorious in that situa- 
tion, he can come out victorious in any situa- 
tion. If he could be trusted there, he can be 
trusted anywhere. The darkest point in hu- 
man history becomes the brightest. Joseph’s 
tomb, in which all their hopes were buried, be- 
came the focal point of light to brighten all 
history and to fill the world with hope and 
gladness, to change gloom into joy and dark- 
ness into light. 

GOD A DOER 

The resurrection of Jesus then not only 
brings God into the realm of fact; it also throws 
light on the question as to what kind of God 
he is. Perhaps I should say that it throws 
light on what kind of God he is by bringing 
him into the realm of fact. 


66 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


He is no impersonal or semi-personal princi- 
ple or. abstract force; he is a person; he is a 
doer. The resurrection of Jesus is his deed. 
This event in human history is not simply an 
illustration of a universal law that human per- 
sonality survives death; it may be that, but it 
is much more than that. It represents the fact 
that God stepped in at this particular point in 
history. He stepped in because he chose to 
do so. He was waiting and watching for the 
opportune moment to intervene, and when that 
moment came he did intervene. Jesus had 
been telling men that God was the heavenly 
Father, that he was interested in the lives of 
men,. that he took a hand in human affairs. 
Now, when the supreme crisis in human his- 
tory came, he vindicated the word of Jesus. 
He made bare his holy arm and showed that 
he was a Father who cares, that he would not 
stand by and see the world go utterly to ruin 
and wickedness reign. He did care and be- 
cause he cared he acted. All was lost without 
God, but he was there and there to save the 
day. | 

The resurrection of Jesus shows that God 
is concerned, tremendously concerned, in hu- 
man affairs. The God of some present-day 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 67 


philosophers is a God who knows perhaps, 
who thinks as the philosophers do, but who 
does nothing more. He sees the evil of the 
world, the suffering of man, but takes no hand 
in affairs. Prof. Royce has said that the value 
of the idea of God is that we can know that in 
anything that comes to us there is one who 
understands.t. But we want a God who will 
do something, as well as one that understands. 
It looks very much in this case as if the philos- 
opher had made his God, and made him in 
his own image. His God is a great Philoso- 
pher who thinks, who contemplates, but does 
nothing. Such a conception of God reminds 
us of the old saying about the weather, to the 
effect that much has been said about the 
weather but very little ever done. | 

It was over against this idea of an inactive 
Philosopher-God, whose only function is to 
furnish a principle of intellectual unity for 
the world, that Professor William James de- 
veloped his conception of a God who is a doer. 
He says that, whatever else may be said about 
God, he is no gentleman’; that is, he is not 
afraid to soil his hands by getting down in the 





*The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Chanter BBE 
3“Pragmatism.” 


68 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


mire and dirt of the world and working to make 
the world better. Now undoubtedly Professor 
James is right on this point. God is a worker. 
He works to make the world better; he works 
to bring in a kingdom of righteousness and 
truth in the world. This was manifested su- 
premely in the resurrection of Jesus. 

Moreover, he is a moral God. He took a 
hand by raising Jesus from the dead, because 
the moral interests of the world were at stake. 
He could not afford to stand idly by when the 
supreme moral interests of mankind were im- 
perilled. 


GOD SUPREME 


Professor William James, in his pragmatist 
philosophy, gives us a God who is a doer, but 
limited in power’. Professor James thinks 
that God probably works along with us finite 
beings to make the best he can out of the world, 
but that even God himself cannot guarantee 
the outcome. Here undoubtedly the God of 
Professor James is not the God of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. The God who raised our Lord 
Jesus Christ from the dead was a God of su- 
preme power. Paul speaks of God’s power 





*See his “Pragmatism” and ‘“Pluralistic Universe.’’ 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 69 


in raising Christ from the dead as if it were 
the supreme exhibition of power (Eph. 1: 19- 
21). And Paul was right. Nothing but al- 
mighty power could have raised Jesus from the 
dead and placed him at the right hand of God. 

The resurrection of Jesus manifested God’s 
supremacy over nature. Nature has no power 
to transcend death or conquer its power. 
Death is a law of nature. Nature is so con- 
stituted that one of its inevitable laws is that 
man must die. And on that subject nature has 
no other word to say. But God had another 
word to say in the case of Jesus. That word 
of God unloosed the bands of death and Je- 
sus came forth alive forevermore. Such an 
idea gives great offense to many ‘“‘modern” 
minds. Nothing like a miracle is to be allowed. 
Nevertheless we cannot undo the facts of 
history in order to suit the prejudices of the 
modern mind. What has been written has 
been written, and will probably have to stand. 
And one thing that stands out as clear as sun- 
light in the resurrection of Jesus is that the 
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is 
supreme over the order of nature. 

The moral supremacy of God is also mani- 
fested in the resurrection of Jesus. The forces 


70 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


of evil put him to death. But God showed 
himself greater than the forces of evil. If Je- 
sus had remained under the power of death, 
it would have been a demonstration of the 
supremacy of sin and darkness in the world. 
The moral order of the world would have been 
utterly wrecked. Every moral cause would 
have been in despair. But God intervened and 
showed himself supreme over the forces of 
evil. The resurrection of Jesus is a demon- 
stration of the fact that no good cause for 
which men fight need ever be despaired of. 
Nothing is ever settled until it is settled right. 
Why? Because there is a God and he is su- 
preme over all the world. The man who fights 
for right can count God on his side. God and 
one make a majority. 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESUR- 
RECTION OF JESUS FOR HIS 
OWN PERSON 


che 


3 





CHAPTER IV 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURREC- 
TION OF JESUS FOR HIS OWN 
PERSON 


E have seen something of the sig- 

nificance of the resurrection for our 
view of God. Let us ask ourselves now: 
What does the resurrection of Jesus mean to 
his own person? When we think of Jesus 
himself, what difference does his resurrection 
make? 

We can very soon see that it has tremendous 
significance. Suppose Jesus had not risen. It 
is easy to see in that case that he would not be 
the Christ of the New Testament and of our 
Christian experience at all. He would be an- 
other Jesus altogether and our gospel would 
be another gospel. In that case Jesus would 
be only a historical character and his gospel 
would be for us only the post mortem influ- 
ence of a good man. It is to be feared that for 
many professing Christians Jesus means very 


little more than this. 
[78] 


74 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


This phase of the matter will be discussed in 
the following chapters. Here our question is 
rather: What difference did the resurrection 
mean to Jesus himself? We are so accustomed 
to thinking of what the resurrection means to 
us that we forget that it meant something for 
Jesus. In fact, too many people look on the 
whole life and experience of Jesus as a kind 
of stage show. They overlook the fact that 
the experiences of Jesus were for him genu- 
ine human experiences as much so as ours are 
for us. 

Of course, it will be impossible to separate 
the matter altogether from the thought of what 
Jesus means to us, but thinking of it primarily 
with reference to him, his own person and ex- 
perience, our question is: What did the resur- 
rection signify for Jesus? And again remem- 
bering our limitations, we would reverently 
answer that it means, first, 


VICTORY OVER SIN AND DEATH 


Jesus battled with sin through his whole life. 
And it was no sham battle that he fought with 
Sin; it was as real as ever battle was in the 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 75 


moral realm. He was tempted in all points 
like as we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4: 15). 
At the beginning of his public ministry, he was 
tempted to turn aside from the hard road of 
suffering and death and win his kingdom by 
an appeal to the popular imagination by throw- 
ing himself in a spectacular and miraculous 
way from the pinnacle of the temple, or by a 
compromise with sin and Satan, a compromise 
that would not have given him his kingdom 
because it would have acknowledged the 
supremacy of the devil. Jesus had to decide 
whether he would fight out with sin to the 
bitter end the question of supremacy in the 
world, or whether he would choose the easier 
way of compromise. But he had insight 
enough to see that complete victory over sin 
could never be won so long as there was any 
compromise; the battle must be to the bitter 
end. The question must be decided once for 
all whether God or Satan should be supreme 
in the world, and to fight it through was the 
only way to determine it. This bitter fight 
with sin kept up throughout the whole life of 





7On this point cf G. Campbell Morgan, ‘‘Crises of the Christ”; 
Black, ‘‘The Dilemmas of Jesus’; and my “System of Christian 
Doctrine.” 


76 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


Jesus. It was a war in which there was no 
surcease, no flag of truce. The devil offered 
a flag of truce several times, but Jesus always 
declined. If he had accepted a flag of truce, 
it would have meant the loss of the whole war. 
The thing for which he was fighting was the 
absolute eradication of evil, its complete ex- 
termination. Nothing less than that would be 
a victory for him. That is why the devil tried 
so hard to get Jesus to accept a compromise. 
A compromise would have meant victory for 
the enemy. 

The only means by which Jesus could win 
was to put himself without reservation into 
the fight. To spare himself meant to lose. 
This is the only way his followers can win. 
That is the reason so many of us do lose in 
the fight; we are not willing to put ourselves 
without reserve into the conflict. We are too 
anxious to spare ourselves. We can win only 
by losing; we can win only by dying; we can 
save our lives only by losing them. 

This means that Jesus declined to use any 
but moral means to accomplish moral ends. 
He did not believe that the end justifies the 
means; in fact, he knew that moral ends can 
not be reached by carnal means; that spiritual 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS a7 


battles are not won by carnal weapons. There- 
fore he declined to worship Satan in order to 
win the supremacy of the world or to cast 
himself down from the temple in order to win 
the admiring allegiance of the multitude. He 
knew that any allegiance thus won could be 
as easily lost as won. He declined thus to be 
acclaimed king; he was hailed as king of David 
by the multitude in the triumphal entry; but 
when he did not seize the throne and crown 
they crucified him. He could have avoided the 
cross by following their lead, but in that case 
he would have been only one more among the 
great kings of the earth whose thrones have 
crumbled and whose crowns have decayed. 

Jesus gained his final victory on this ques- 
tion in the garden of Gethsemane. Here he 
got his final consent to spare not himself, but 
to fight with sin to the bitter end, even to the 
giving up of his own life. In obedience to the 
Father’s will, he drank the bitter cup of sor- 
row and death. 

When Jesus died on the cross, it seemed that 
sin had triumphed. Apparently the battle was 
lost. But to the surprise of his friends, the 
dismay of his enemies and the consternation 
of hell and its forces, Jesus arose. The tomb 


78 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


was found empty. His apparent defeat was 
his victory. By losing his life, he had saved 
it; by giving it away he had kept it. The vic- 
tory of sin was its defeat. By his own un- 
compromising fight with sin he had conquered; 
and by conquering sin he had conquered death. 
The sting of death is sin (1 Cor. 15: 56), and 
by extracting the sting of death he had de- 
Stroyed its power. Having destroyed its power 
he came forth on the morning of the third day 
a victor over sin and death. 

Sin and death are inseparably connected. 
They are not two things, they are only two 
phases or aspects of the same reality. By iden- 
tifying himself with a sinful race in the incar- 
nation, Jesus came under the power of what 
Dr. Mullins calls the sin-death principle.t He 
identified himself with the human race to the 
last possible limit, except by personally shar- 
ing in its sin. But although he did not share 
in its sin, he did share in the woe that grows 
out of sin. He shared in this more completely 
perhaps than would have been possible if he 
had been a sinner. Had he been a sinner he 
could not have had perfect sympathy for sin- 





*See “The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression,” 
by E. Y. Mullins. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 79 


ners. His perfect character was manifested 
in his complete sympathy for sinners and his 
unreserved identification of himself with all 
their woe. Having identified himself with 
man for man’s salvation, he did not draw back 
from anything that belonged to man. In fact, 
according to Hebrews, he took our nature that 
he might die for us (Heb. 2: 14). He did 
not decline to die because he realized that for 
that purpose he had come into the world (John 
12: 27). 

By thus sharing man’s lot to the bitter end 
he conquered sin and death. He shared the 
common lot of mankind and thus redeemed 
mankind. He conquered mankind’s worst 
enemy, sin and death, and came off victorious 
over them. 

Again, the resurrection brought Jesus into 
a position of 


LORDSHIP OVER THE WORLD AND OVER MANKIND 


This comes out as distinctly in Peter’s state- 
ment on the day of Pentecost as anywhere else 
in the New Testament. He says, in speaking 
of the resurrection, that God has made him to 
be both Lord and Christ (Acts 2: 36). They 
had crucified this Jesus, had put him to an 


80 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


open shame, had treated him as if he were 
the vilest of criminals: but God has reversed 
the matter; he has highly exalted him and given 
him a name that is above every name, that in 
the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of 
things in heaven, and things on earth and 
things under the earth (Phil. 2: 9, 10). Paul’s 
statement indicates that God did this as a moral 
reward for his suffering and death in obedience 
to the will of God. 

This lordship that came to Jesus, then, was 
not something to be taken for granted; it was 
not a matter of course. It was something that 
was morally conditioned and morally achieved. 
It is true that one might gather from Paul’s 
statement and from John’s Gospel that some- 
how this state of exaltation and lordship was 
potential in this man Jesus because of his pre- 
existent life and divine glory. But even this 
must not be allowed to take the moral element 
out of the life and achievement of Jesus. There 
was no mechanical guarantee of reaching the 
goal in his case, no more than there can be in 
ourcase. The only guarantees and assurances 
that can be given in the moral realm are moral 
in their nature. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS $1 


Paul’s statement also carries with it the idea 
that this lordship of which Jesus comes into 
possession is universal: it includes everything 
in heaven, on earth and under the earth. It is 
difficult to see how his statement could have 
been made more sweeping and universal than 
that. The question has sometimes been de- 
bated whether Jesus was Lord over the whole 
universe, or was Lord only over mankind.’ It 
is difficult to see how he could be admitted as 
Lord over mankind unless he were Lord over 
the universe. Man is a moral being. The 
moral realm is the highest we know. If Jesus 
is Lord there, he must be Lord everywhere. 
There is nothing to be gained by bisecting the 
world and admitting Jesus as Lord over only 
a part of it. If he is Lord of the moral world, 
he is Lord in the realm of the highest. Why 
not then Lord of all? Perhaps those who take 
the other position deceive themselves by rea- 
soning that man is only a small portion of the 
universe and that Jesus can be admitted as 
Lord over man without too great offence to 
the majesty of the vastness of the universe. It 
is true that man is only a small portion of the 





*See MackIntosh, “‘The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ.” 


82 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


universe spatially considered. But space is 
not the ultimate measure of things. The ulti- 
mate measure of things is conscience, or man’s 
moral consciousness, if you please. True 
greatness is not the greatness of space, nor of 
military power, nor of intellectual shrewdness, 
but it is the greatness of moral goodness. That 
is why Jesus progressively rules the world 
rather than Plato or Napoleon or Columbus or 
Galileo. Jesus developed in his life and demon- 
strated on the cross absolute and unquestioned 
moral goodness. Hence God could commit to 
him power without reserve: he was made Lord 
of all. Perhaps one might more accurately say 
that the possession of absolute goodness is the 
possession of unreserved power. Ultimate 
power, power in the moral world, is the power 
of goodness. To try to wield any other kind 
of force in the moral world, or in order to pro- 
duce moral results brings only confusion and 
failure. Perhaps this was one thing that kept 
Jesus from appealing to spectacular claptrap 
or military power. He who thinks that the 
world can be dazzled into goodness or forced 
into righteousness only fools himself and 
wastes his energy. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 83 


Without doubt the New Testament writers 
thought of Jesus as coming into universal 
lordship in the resurrection. Matthew reports 
Jesus as saying after the resurrection: “All 
authority hath been given unto me in heaven 
and on earth’ (28: 18). In Romans 1: 4 
Paul says that Christ was “declared to be the 
Son of God with power, according to the spirit 
of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead”’ 
(Am. Rev.). I do not believe, however, that 
this translation does justice to Paul’s thought. 
The American Bible Union translation gets 
nearer the thought when it says that he “was 
instated as the Son of God with power accord- 
ing to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of 
the dead.’ What Paul means to say is not 
that the resurrection demonstrated or marked 
out Christ as the Son of God, but that by the 
resurrection he was instated in a position of 
power that rightfully belonged to him as the 
Son of God. The resurrection was the inau- 
guration of Jesus into a position of authority 
and power that was rightfully his as the Son 
of God.t_ The resurrection of Jesus marked a 





1For this interpretation I am indebted to the late Dr. Wm. 
Arnold Stevens, of Rochester Theological Seminary, who was, 
I think, the greatest interpreter of Paul I have ever known. I 
would not want the reader to hold Dr. Stevens responsible for 
any exact statement of mine, but the general idea is the same. 


84 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


transition in the state of being of Jesus: it was 
a transition in which he came into the posses- 
sion of universal authority and power. This. 
seems to me to represent the conception of the 
significance of the resurrection found every- 
where in the New Testament. 

The resurrection marks the transition of 
Christ to a state or condition of 


SPIRITUAL OMNIPRESENCE 


This matches the idea of his universal au- 
thority and power. He is not limited in au- 
thority and power, nor is he limited in spir- 
itual presence. After predicating his universal 
authority and on the basis of this authority 
commanding his followers to “make disciples 
of all the nations, baptizing them into the name 
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Spirit,” etc., he says: “And lo, I am with you 
always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 
28: 18-20). Here he promises his universal 
presence to his people as they go in his name 
to Christianize the nations of the world. Some 
have objected to considering these the actual 
words of Jesus. They represent, so it is ob- 
jected, too advanced theological ideas. They 
do not fit back into the situation at that time 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 85 


with its undeveloped theological thought. But 
if one accepts the resurrection as a fact, then 
there is nothing at all improbable in words like 
these from the lips of the risen Saviour. Of 
course, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, 
then such language at that time, or at any 
other time, sounds out of place. In that case, 
it can only represent the conscious or uncon- 
scious invention of an over-enthusiastic Chris- 
tian of those early days who perhaps could 
not distinguish historical fact from his own 
fancies. 

But there is one strange thing about it. If 
Jesus did not rise from the dead, and this lan- 
guage represents only the theological invention 
of a later generation read back into the mouth 
of Jesus, it is passing strange that the experi- 
ences of thousands upon thousands of Chris- 
tian workers since that early day have been of 
just such a nature as would fit in exactly with 
this supposed promise of Jesus; that is, their 
experience fits in exactly with the supposition 
that he did rise. They have experienced such 
joy, inspiration and patience as only a living 
Saviour could give. Do you say it is illusion P 
Then this illusion has borne strange fruit, has 
produced strange results. If such an illusion 


86 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


can produce such fruit, then we must live in a 
world of illusion, and joy and moral inspira- 
tion and moral goodness itself must be an il- 
lusion. 

We see then that the resurrection of Jesus 
marks the difference between a Christ who 
only lived and died some centuries ago and 
who influences the world by his example and 
teaching—the post mortem influence of a good 
man—and a Christ who by conquering sin and 
death became the universal, spiritual Lord of 
our lives and of the world visible and invisible 
—the eternal King of the ages. 


\ 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESUR- 
RECTION OF JESUS FOR OUR 
SALVATION 





CHAPTER V 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURREC- 
TION OF JESUS FOR OUR SALVATION 


N the history of Christian thought much 

emphasis has been placed on the death of 
Jesus in relation to our salvation, but compara- 
tively little on his resurrection. This is not in 
harmony with the teachings of the New Testa- 
ment, nor does it answer the needs of man’s 
moral and spiritual life. In this chapter we 
propose to consider something of the signifi- 
cance of the resurrection of Jesus as bearing 
on the question of our salvation. 


THE RESURRECTION ESSENTIAL TO THE SAVING 
WORK OF CHRIST 

It has sometimes been stated that the resur- 
rection of Jesus is significant for our salvation 
in that it signified God’s acceptance and ap- 
proval of his atoning work in his death. Per- 
haps this is true, although I do not recall any 
place in the New Testament where just that 
idea is presented. Paul does present the 

[89] 


90 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


thought that the exaltation of Jesus (which 
certainly included the resurrection) was a 
moral reward for his act of obedience in giv- 
ing himself to the death of the cross (Phil. 2: 
9). It was because of his obedience, consum- 
mated in the death of the cross, that God highly 
exalted him and gave him the name that is 
above every name. Paul does not explain what 
it was in the death of Jesus that made it an 
act of obedience to God. But the New Testa- 
ment writers present his whole life as a life of 
obedience. This comes out very clearly in 
John’s Gospel. Jesus in that Gospel says 
many times that he came to do the Father’s 
will. To do the Father’s will is his meat and 
drink, the great passion of his life (John 4: 
34, et al). His death was also in obedience 
to the Father’s will (Phil. 2: 5ff).- This obe- 
dience found its reward in his resurrection 
from the dead. We would miss it, however, if 
we should think of his resurrection, as being 
only God’s seal of approval on his atoning 
work, in the sense that his death was what 
saved us apart from the resurrection, and that 
the resurrection was just God’s way of letting 
us know that his death was accepted as an 
atonement for our sins. The New Testament 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 91 


rather presents the resurrection of Jesus as it- 
self an integral and essential factor in the sav- 
ing work of Christ. He was delivered up for 
our trespasses and raised for our justification 
(Rom. 4: 25). Paul says again that if Christ 
be not risen from the dead we are yet in our 
sins (1 Cor. 15: 17), and that without the 
risen Christ our preaching and our faith are 
vain, there is nothing in them (1 Cor. 15: 14). 

The resurrection of Jesus is the pivot on 
which New Testament Christianity turns. As 
already noted, it gives us a universal, spiritual, 
omnipotent Christ rather than a local, national 
one. The Christ of the New Testament is not 
merely a Christ who lived and died at a cer- 
tain point in human history; he transcended 
death, rose victorious over it, and thereby be- 
came for us a Saviour of universal spiritual 
power. His kingdom is therefore not of this 
world. It is a kingdom that knows no lim- 
itations of national boundaries, or race or color. 
Peter made a great discovery when he discov- 
ered that God is no respecter of persons, but 
accepts men of any nationality or race when 
they come to him in the right spirit (Acts 10: 
34). The resurrection of Jesus was the pivotal 
point in New Testament history, because it 


92 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


marked the transition from a Christ limited by 
time and place to one who transcended all such 
limitations. This was the point at which Chris- 
tianity broke away from Judaism. His rising 
from the dead made Christianity a universal 
religion rather than a sect of Judaism. The 
Christians of the New Testament were not men 
who looked back merely to the Christ mani- 
fested in history; they looked up to the Christ 
who rose above the limitations of time and 
place and became a universal Saviour, one 
who could be reached by complying with the 
spiritual conditions, on the part of men of all 
races and climes. 
SALVATION NOT MERELY ESCAPE FROM 
PUNISHMENT 

Consider again the statement that the resur- 
rection of Jesus has its significance for our 
salvation in that it was God’s seal of approval 
on the death of Christ as an atonement for 
our sins. This statement betrays a leaning to- 
ward the idea that salvation is a legalistic 
transaction in which we are let off from the 
punishment for our sins on the ground that 
Christ bore our punishment. Especially is this 
true if one sees in the resurrection of Jesus 
nothing but a seal of God’s approval on the 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 93 


death of Christ as an atonement for sin. Such 
a view does not look upon the resurrection as 
an essential factor in Christ’s saving work, but 
simply as a seal of approval on his saving 
work. It views his death as an atonement for 
sin in the sense that it is the one and only sav- 
ing work of Christ. Such a view of atonement 
looks on the death of Christ as being vicarious 
and nothing but that. Undoubtedly his death 
was vicarious, but as Dr. Mabie says, it is 
more than vicarious; it is vicario-vital. 
What is salvation? In the minds of many 
people it seems to amount to about this. Christ 
bore the punishment of my sins and therefore 
when I believe in him God pardons me, and 
his pardon means that I am set free so far as 
the punishment of my sins is concerned. They 
claim to get this idea of salvation from Paul, 
especially Paul’s doctrine of justification. It 
is easy enough to get this idea of salvation from 
Paul’s writings. All one has to do is to con- 
sult his dictionary and exercise his logical fac- 
ulty a little. One can read in a Greek lexicon 
that Paul’s word which is translated “justify” 
means to “declare just.””’ One then reasons 
that Paul therefore teaches that justification is 


*See “The Divine Reason of the Cross,’”’ by H. C. Mabie. 


94 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


simply a transaction in which God “declares” 
one just, but does not make him just. It is a 
transaction in which one is set right in his rela- 
tion with the law, but not made right in char- 
acter. One is declared just on the basis of 
Christ’s atoning work without being made right 
in heart and life. This conclusion is easy 
enough and is a good example of the fact that 
young preachers (and others) need to be given 
two warnings in trying to get at the meaning 
of the New Testament: one is to beware of the 
lexicon and the other is to beware of logic. If 
one will just stick closely to his lexicon and be 
logical, there is no further guarantee needed 
that he will never get at the meaning of the 
New Testament and never understand Chris- 
tian principles. Because Paul uses here a term 
that had a forensic history or was used in legal 
procedure, to say that therefore he used it in 
a legalistic sense is not to interpret Paul but 
to make oneself the slave of the dictionary. A 
dictionary is a good thing as a servant but it 
is a very poor master. One could probably 
get at the sense of what Paul says better with- 
out a lexicon than he can when he thus be- 
comes the slave of the lexicon. To understand 
what Paul means by justification we must do 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 95 


two things besides consult the lexicon. We 
must take into account his whole discussion 
and we must consult our own experience of 
salvation. When we do this we will find that 
justification with Paul was no legalistic trans- 
action in which we are let off from the punish- 
ment of our sins, but a revolutionary act of 
God in which we are made new creatures in > 
Christ Jesus. But somebody says that is not 
justification but regeneration. Well, it is re- 
generation; but regeneration and justification 
are not two transactions, they are one. Justi- 
fication is a regenerative transaction. It is the 
justification of life (Rom. 5: 18) ; that is, jus- 
tification and life are one and inseparable. In 
Paul’s thought, sin, condemnation and death 
go together; so do faith, justification and life. 
When the objection is made to Paul’s doctrine 
of justification that it encourages one to live in 
sin (Rom. 6: 1), Paul goes on to show that 
the justified man is one who has died to sin 
and risen to walk in newness of life. And he 
is not setting forth this dying to sin and rising 
in newness of life as something in addition to 
justification, but as an implication of justifica- 
tion. The idea, then, is not that one is regener- 
ated in addition to justification, but rather that 


96 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


justification itself involves regeneration. Re- 
generation is an aspect of justification. 

It has sometimes been said that justification 
gives one a new standing with God, while re- 
generation gives him a new nature; justifica- 
tion changes one’s relation to God, while re- 
generation changes the man himself in his 
inner life. But after all, each of these state- 
ments is saying the same thing in different 
ways. A man’s moral nature is nothing apart 
from his relation to God. There is nothing 
about a man deeper or more fundamental than 
his relation to God. To change the man’s re- 
lation to God therefore is to change his moral 
nature. A new relationship with God means 
a new heart; it means a new creation. 

To talk therefore about Paul’s doctrine of 
justification as legalistic is to miss the point. 
It is not legalistic. Paul uses forensic termi- 
nology, it is true; but that does not mean that 
his thought is legalistic. To say that his doc- 
trine of justification is forensic or legalistic is 
to confuse the form of thought with the sub- 
stance. It is to make oneself the slave of the 
dictionary. To infer in addition that one must 
have regeneration as a transaction separate 
from justification is to make oneself the slave 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 97 


of logic. To make oneself the slave of the dic- 
tionary and of logic is a sure road to confusion 
and error. 


FREEDOM FROM THE BONDAGE OF SIN 


Paul’s doctrine of justification then is not 
legalistic. What he means by justification is 
a moral and spiritual transaction in which one 
is made right in relation with God and thus 
becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus. The 
love of God comes into one’s heart and the 
love of sin dies. It is a transaction in which 
one is freed from the bondage of sin as well 
as its punishment. The power of sin in one’s 
life is broken and he realizes a spiritual free- 
dom before impossible. 

In Paul’s teaching condemnation and justi- 
fication are opposites. It is condemnation that 
necessitates justification. This he shows in 
Rom. 1: 17—-3:20. He shows there that con- 
demnation on account of sin has come on all 
men, Jew and Gentile, and necessitates their 
justification by the grace of God. Justifica- 
tion of the sinner comes on the basis of 
Christ's atoning work and on condition of 
faith, as shown in Rom. 3: 21-28. But just 
what does justification involve? Protestant 


98 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


theology has usually answered that justifica- 
tion means freedom from condemnation and 
has interpreted this to mean freedom from 
guilt or liability to punishment. Justification 
then frees one from the punishment of sin. To 
free one from the bondage of sin something 
else was necessary. But Paul means more 
than freedom from punishment by justifica- 
tion. The blessedness of justification is the 
blessedness of freedom from condemnation. 
“There is therefore now no condemnation to 
them that are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8: 1). 
Then he immediately adds in verse 2: “For 
the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus 
made me free from the law of sin and of 
death.” He is thinking here of two opposing 
forces as contending for the mastery in human 
life. One is sin and death; the other is the 
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. In chapter 7, he 
describes in terms of his own experience what 
the “law (reign or rule) of sin and death” 
means. It means bondage, helplessness, des- 
pair. He tries under the law to deliver himself 
from that bondage. It is a state in which one 
is ‘carnal, sold under sin” (vs. 14). One 
can desire the good, but can not do it (vs. 15). 
He is helpless under the power of evil. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 99 


Finally, he cries in despair: “Wretched man 
that I am! who shall deliver me out of the 
body of this death P”’ (vs. 24). Then he says: 
“T thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord’ 
(vs. 25). He now finds deliverance in that 
the law (rule) of the Spirit of life in Christ 
Jesus sets him free from the law (rule) of sin 
and of death. Justification then means free- 
dom from the bondage of sin and death. It 
means the incoming of a new life that sets one 
free from the bondage of sin. 


THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE LAW 


At the end of chapter 3 Paul, after having 
set forth that justification comes by faith in 
Jesus as the propitiation for our sins, asks: 
“Do we then make the law of none effect 
through faith P’’ He answers his own question 
by saying: “God forbid: nay, we establish 
the law.” In chapter 8, he shows how the law 
is established. He says: ‘“What the law could 
not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, 
God, sending his own Son in the likeness of 
sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the 
flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be 
fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, 
but after the Spirit (vss. 3, 4). 


100 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


Now let us notice something of what Paul 
says here. He speaks of “what the law could 
not do.” What is that? It could not break 
the power of sin in human life, could not set 
man free from its bondage, could not enable 
one to get victory over sin and live a righteous 
life. That failure of the law is graphically de- 
scribed in chapter 7. The reason it failed was 
because of the weakness of man. The law 
could not break the power of sin, in that it was 
weak through the flesh. The failure was in 
man, not the law. The law itself was holy, 
righteous and good (7: 12). But man is 
weak and can not meet its requirements. Hence 
it fails to justify, to break the power of sin. 
But God secured the desired end in another 
way. He sent his own Son in the likeness of 
sinful flesh; that is, in human nature, but free 
from sin. He sent him as an offering for sin, 
and thereby condemned sin in the flesh; that 
is, broke its power. And the purpose of it all 
is that the ordinance (righteous requirement) 
of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk 
not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. God 
was working toward the end of delivering us 
from the condemnation and bondage of sin 
and setting us free to live a righteous life. He 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 101 


gives us a new moral dynamic, a new life that 
enables us to do the thing that the law requires. 

Justification then is freedom from condem- 
nation—freedom from the bondage of sin, free- 
dom to do what the law requires, power to live 
a righteous life. Salvation is not escape from 
punishment, not a fire insurance policy for the 
next life; it is being made a new creature, given 
a new moral dynamic, made to love God and 
hate sin. 


THE PLACE OF THE RESURRECTION 


But what is the bearing of the resurrection 
of Jesus on all this? It has a very definite 
bearing on it. If the atonement of Jesus were 
simply the bearing of so much suffering for 
us by him, if it were simply the payment of a 
debt to be measured in quantitative terms—- 
that and nothing more—so that God could let 
us off from our suffering, and if salvation 
meant nothing but the escape from the punish- 
ment of our sins; if salvation were that kind 
of a transaction based on that kind of an 
atonement, then a dead Christ might save as 
well as a living Christ. In that case, his death 
only would have been necessary to our salva- 
tion, not his resurrection. But salvation is not 


102 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


that kind of a transaction. It is moral and 
spiritual renovation: it is a new creation. It 
is itself a being crucified with Christ and a 
resurrection from the dead. And it takes a 
living Saviour to raise the spiritually dead. 
That is too great a task for a dead Jew. 


THE MEANING OF FAITH 


We are brought around again then to the 
point that Christian faith is not simply looking 
back to a Christ who lived and died at a certain 
point in human history. Christian faith is not 
simply the acceptance of facts, however well 
attested, not even the facts of the death and 
resurrection of Jesus, the foundation facts of 
the gospel. Nor is it simply the belief of a 
doctrine, however true or important the doc- 
trine may be, not even the doctrine that Jesus 
is the Son of God, nor the doctrine of his 
atoning death, nor of his resurrection from the 
dead. It is more than the acceptance of facts 
or the belief of doctrines; it is trust in a Person. 
It is a bond of union between persons. It 
unites the trusting sinner to the living Saviour. 
And since it unites him to the living Saviour it 
works a revolution in his moral nature: it 
brings spiritual regeneration. It makes him a 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 103 


new creature. One can not have faith in Jesus 
as Saviour and ever be the same man again. 


UNION WITH CHRIST 


This will help us to understand why Paul 
and John lay such stress on the believer’s 
union with Christ. We are not saved by an 
absent, far-away Christ. Hecomestous. He 
dwells within us. We are in him and he is in 
us. We must eat his flesh and drink his blood 
(John 6: 53ff). He is the head; we are the 
members of his body (Romans 12: 3ff, 1 Cor. 
12: 12ff). One would almost think that John 
and Paul were pantheists as they talk about 
the intimate, vital union between the living 
Saviour and the believer. But the union that 
they believe in is something more vital and even 
more intimate than a pantheistic union. It is 
not the cold, dead unity of impersonal “‘sub- 
stance,” in which the believer loses his per- 
sonal identity and perhaps the Infinite never 
had personal identity to lose. It is rather 
the close and intimate fellowship of a gracious 
Redeemer who has so loved the sinner as to 
bear his woe in death and who now shares the 
glories of his triumphant life with the trusting 
sinner. It is a union analagous to the closest 


104 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


and most blessed fellowships of this life, such 
as that of husband and wife (Eph. 5:22ff), 
but also something more glorious than that. 
It is a union in which the living Christ works 
creatively by his Spirit in the believer to re- 
produce in the believer his own moral and spir- 
itual image. God works in us by the mighty 
energy of his power that raised Jesus from the 
dead (Eph. 1: 19-21). The only power that 
could recreate a sinner dead in trespasses and 
sins is the power of God that made the worlds 
and that raised Jesus from the dead. Itis 
a union in which the creative Christ who con- 
quered death in the resurrection awakens in us 
all the potencies of our moral and spiritual na- 
tures and brings them to realization. It is not 
a union, however, in which we are passive. We 
are not dead things. We are persons. As 
God works in us therefore we should work 
out in our lives to full expression and realiza- 
tion what God works in us to accomplish. His 
purpose is realized, his work is completed, only 
as we work out what he works in. His crea- 
tive activity does not do away with the neces- 
sity for activity on our part. Rather his crea- 
tive activity is consummated in our moral and 
spiritual activity. Some things we do not fully 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 105 


possess until we express them. Character is 
crystallized in expression. An inactive faith 
therefore is not faith at all. God works crea- 
tively in us, but he works in accordance with 
moral and spiritual laws. He works only as 
our moral and spiritual natures are aroused 
and express themselves in moral and spiritual 
activity. 

We should work out our salvation because it 
is God that works in us both to will and to do 
(Phil. 2: 12, 13). God works in us to awaken 
aspiration, longing, yearning; and then he 
works to bring our aspiration to realization in 
deed. And since God’s work is not finished 
until the deed is done we must cooperate if 
his purpose is to be realized. We do not co- 
operate with him, however, as with an equal; 
we cooperate with him by yielding to his al- 
mighty power, by trusting his sovereign grace 
and by following his divine leading. 

Salvation then is not something handed 
down in a ready-made package, complete once 
for all. Salvation is not something that 
Christ gives us apart from himself. He gives 
us salvation in giving us himself. He keeps us 
saved by continuing to give us himself. Be- 
cause he lives we shall live also (John 14: 19). 


106 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


He saves to the uttermost all that come unto 
God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make 
intercession for them (Heb. 7: 25). The liv- 
ing Christ is our Advocate with the Father (1 
John 2: 1). He is the assurance of our con- 
tinued standing with a holy God. Christ 
Jesus, alive forevermore, is our salvation now 
and eternally. 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESUR- 
RECTION OF JESUS FOR THE 
FUTURE LIFE 





CHAPTER VI 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURREC- 
TION OF JESUS FOR THE FUTURE 
LIFE 


HE question of life beyond death is one 

of perennial interest to mankind. If a 
man die, shall he live againP This question 
has engaged the earnest thought of mankind 
as far back as we have any record of the 
thoughts of men. 

Before the World War one heard much talk 
to the effect that religion ought to concern it- 
self with this life, not with the next. One does 
not hear so much of that now. There is per- 
haps more being said about immortality and 
the future life than ever before. Since the 
War there is a revival of interest in spiritual- 
ism and all kinds of movements that deal with 
the future life. On the other hand, there are 
those to-day who seem to fear that belief in 
personal immortality is dying out among cer- 
tain classes of educated people. The writer 
has no fears on that point. Men will no more 

{ 109 ] 


110 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


cease to believe in personal immortality than 
they will cease to take air into their lungs or 
food for their bodies, no more than plant life 
will cease to drink in the life-giving proper- 
ties of fresh air, sunshine and soil. Man is 
made for immortality and his soul turns to- 
ward life beyond death as naturally as the sun- 
flower turns toward the sun. 


ARGUMENTS FOR IMMORTALITY 


Yet man’s instinctive longing for life beyond 
death, his natural belief.in such a life, seeks 
rational vindication. Hence there have been 
various arguments for immortality, just as 
there have been various arguments for the ex- 
istence of God. These arguments in each case 
have not been the source of the belief; they 
have rather been the vindication of beliefs that 
men already held. Men did not come to be- 
lieve in God and immortality because they had 
reasoned themselves into believing in these 
ideas; they rather believed in God and immor- 
tality and then sought to justify their belief 
to themselves and others. These arguments 
are the form that their thoughts took as they 
undertook to justify their belief in God and 
immortality. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 111 


But arguments have never satisfied the mind 
with reference to immortality. Such argu- 
ments are not worthless; far from it. The be- 
lief in life beyond death is a rational belief 
and can be given rational vindication. But 
these arguments have never been entirely con- 
vincing. They leave a margin for doubt. They 
cannot do much more than enable us to say, 
“Perhaps we shall live beyond death.” This 
was about the best Socrates could do. He had 
a rather definite hope of life beyond the grave, 
but not certainty. 

Besides, these arguments at the best only 
give us a doctrine, an idea of immortality. But 
ideas alone do not satisfy the religious life of 
man. 

TWO ORDERS OF FACT 

But is there anything more substantial than 
the idea or doctrine of immortality that we can 
attain? The New Testament does give us 
something more substantial. It comes out of 
the resurrection of Jesus. There are two phases 
of it. 

One is the resurrection of Jesus as a fact of 
history. We have set forth in Chapter I some- 
thing of the evidence for the resurrection of 
Jesus. As we there saw, that evidence is not 


112 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


simply the testimony of the documents that we 
possess in our New Testament; it is the total 
fact of Christianity. Christianity is founded 
on the resurrection of Jesus and is the evidence 
for his resurrection. The very existence, vital- 
ity and persistence of the Christian movement 
is evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. A 
living Christ and a living Christianity are in- 
separable. A vital Christianity could no more 
exist and persist in the world apart from a liv- 
ing Christ than sunshine could exist apart from 
the sun. 

But it is not necessary here to repeat the 
arguments for the resurrection of Jesus. These 
arguments have been given. Assuming now 
that the resurrection of Jesus is accepted as a 
fact on the basis of the evidence we have, it 
follows then that belief in life beyond the grave 
comes down out of the realm of speculation 
into the realm of fact. If Jesus rose from the 
dead, then death is not the end of human ex- 
istence, but the future life is a fact. 

But it may be said that even if one accepts 
the resurrection of Jesus as a fact, this only 
gives one an idea or doctrine of immortality. 
This is readily granted. It was stated above 
that two things were necessary to make the 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 113 


future life more than an idea for us. In addi- 
tion to the resurrection of Jesus as a fact of 
history there must be communion with the liv- 
ing Christ as a matter of vital experience. Be- 
lief in a fact, even the resurrection of Jesus, is 
only an idea, a doctrine, if it stops with that. 
But the Christ who rose from the dead is ac- 
cessible to faith. Wecan have fellowship with 
him, and this fellowship with him makes life 
beyond death more than an idea: it then be- 
comes an assured reality. One who believes 
in Jesus as the living Saviour and Lord has the 
experience of a life that transcends the limits 
of the natural. It rises above the realm of the 
visible and tangible world. It is spiritual in 
its nature. This is what the Gospel of John 
presents to us as “eternal life.’ It is eternal, 
not simply as a matter of endless duration, 
but in its spiritual and supernatural quality. 
One who experiences this eternal life has the 
assurance in his heart that this life is imper- 
ishable in its nature. He might not be able to 
put his reasons for believing in the imperish- 
able nature of this life in the form of a syllo- 
gism nor of a logical deduction of any kind; 
nevertheless he has an assurance that speaks 
peace to his soul and quiets his fears. 


114 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


This assurance with reference to the future 
life finds expression in the New Testament in 
many ways. In the sixth chapter of John, Je- 
sus says four times, with reference to the man 
that believes on him, that he will raise that one 
in the last day (verses 39, 40, 44, 54). He 
says in John 8: 51: “If a man keep my word, 
he shall never see death.”’ In John 11: 26, he 
said to the sorrowing Martha, ‘““Whosoever liv- 
eth and believeth on me shall never die.” 

Here we have two orders of fact that take 
the belief in immortality out of the realm of 
speculation and bring it into the realm of fact 
and experience. Belief in immortality for the 
Christian is more than a speculation. It is a 
living conviction growing out of his commun- 
ion with the living Saviour. 

We still hear something every now and then 
to the effect that belief in immortality is not 
essential to religion. Some go even so far as 
to say that religion without belief in immortal- 
ity is nobler and more unselfish than a religion 
that has to depend on the idea'of the future 
life to support itself. We are even told that 
to appeal to the future life for the vindication 
of God’s ways with man, or as a means of get- 
ting strength for the tasks and burdens of this 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 115 


life, is unworthy or even degrading. One 
should do right, we are told, for the sake of 
doing right, even without reference to the fu- 
ture consequences of our deeds. 

But this kind of talk sounds much as if one 
should say that the test of a flying machine is 
that it should be able to fly without air as a 
medium; that it should fly in a vacuum. The 
spiritual world and the future life constitute 
the very atmosphere in which religion lives. 
It is nothing against a fish that it cannot live 
out of water, nor is it against a bird that it 
cannot fly ina vacuum. Some men would give 
us a religion without God or a future life. Such 
a religion would be noble, indeed! Not to dis- 
cuss the merits of such a system, it is enough 
to call attention to the fact that it is not re- 
ligion. Much less is it Christianity. 

It is true that some forms of religion have 
conceived of the future life in an unworthy 
way. Some forms of Christianity may have 
done this. But this is no argument against 
immortality. The Christians of the New Tes- 
tament did not believe in the future life as a 
means of getting some reward for service sel- 
fishly rendered for what they expected to get 
out of it. They believed in the future life 


116 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


because they experienced a life here and now 
of a quality that they could not believe of 
a perishable nature. This is the significance of 
Paul’s statement when he speaks about the 
earnest of the Spirit in our hearts (2 Cor. 1: 
22), and of the first fruits of the Spirit (Rom. 
8:23). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of prom- 
ise (Eph. 1: 13, 14); that is, his present abid- 
ing in our hearts is God’s promise of a more 
glorious life yet to come. We are sealed in 
the Spirit. The Spirit in us is God’s seal by 
which he pledges himself for our deliverance 
in the day of redemption; that is, the day of 
resurrection (Eph. 4: 30). 

With reference to the light thrown on the 
destiny of the Christian from our fellowship 
with the risen Christ we gather then, in the 
first place, that it is the guarantee of our con- 
tinued existence after death. This fellowship 
of the Christian with the living Saviour con- 
firms the historical evidence for the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is 
the historical foundation of Christianity, and 
the continuance and vitality of Christianity 
constitute, on the other hand, the evidence for 
the resurrection of Jesus. Someone may say 
that this is reasoning in a circle. No, it is see- 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 117 


ing two sides of a sphere. The one fact in- 
volves the other. 


HIGHER LIFE 


The resurrection of Jesus and our commun- 
ion with him give us assurance, not only of 
continued life after death, but also a more 
blessed life than we enjoy in this world. 

One thing bearing on this is the fact, pre- 
viously noticed, that Jesus was not raised back 
to the plane of life on which he had lived be- 
fore the crucifixion, but to a higher state of 
existence. His body was not a body of flesh 
and blood such as he had before death, nor 
will ours be. His body had higher powers, 
it seemed, and Paul says that our resurrection 
bodies will not be bodies of flesh and blood (1 
Cor. 15: 50). This shows that our life be- 
yond death will be one of a higher order than 
we now enjoy. 

Paul had this hope when he said that, as 
between continuing here to serve his brethren 
and going on to be with the Lord, so far as he 
himself was concerned, it would be very far 
better to depart and be with the Lord (Phil. 
1:23). Our life of fellowship with Christ on 
the other side will be the continuance and 


118 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


fruition of our fellowship with him here. The 
only assurance that any man can have that he 
will go to heaven when he dies is that he shall 
have something of heaven in this life. The 
bond of union between the trusting soul and 
its Lord is one that is stronger than death. That 
union will abide the shocks of time and will 
endure through death. The life that we live 
now in Christ is a life that is death-transcend- 
ing in its nature. It will, therefore, endure 
eternally and the soul born of God will live a 
life of fellowship with him forever. 


PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP CENTRAL 


This shows another thing. The blessedness 
of salvation is primarily the blessedness of per- 
sonal relationships. Our eternal happiness 
will not consist so much in where we are as in 
what we shall be and with whom we shall be. 
Some have said that heaven would be here on 
the earth; others have said not. As a matter 
of fact, that is not the main question. The pri- 
mary question is what we shall be in relation 
to God as revealed in Christ. Even to be with 
Christ is not primarily a matter of place and 
space relations. It is primarily a matter of 
spiritual relations and personal attitudes. To 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 119 


be with Christ is first of all a matter of per- 
sonal adjustment to him. If we are rightly 
adjusted to him here and know him in our 
hearts, we shall know him more fully on the 
other side. There is a tie there that death can- 
not break, but will rather strengthen. Death 
is the gateway to a life of closer and more 
blessed fellowship with Christ on the other 
side. 

Death for Jesus, which was even to his 
blessed eyes a thing to be dreaded, became an 
entrance into a higher life, a more exalted 
state of existence. Through submission to 
death he found exaltation and glory. So shall 
we. He triumphed over death both for him- 
self and for us. He battled with the monster 
death and conquered him in order that he 
should not be a monster for us. Because he 
conquered death, we shall also conquer him, 
and shall be able to say: “‘O death, where is 
thy victory ? O death, where is thy sting?” (1 
Gore USeb5:). 

Our blessedness is to be interpreted in per- 
sonal terms. Time and place have significance 
only in relation to persons and personal ex- 
periences. Our joy on the other side will be 
the joy of full personal life in fellowship with 


120 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


the supreme Person of human history, Christ 
Jesus our Lord, and all those who love and 
serve him. Hell will be eternity without 
Christ. Eternity without him could be noth- 
ing but hell. Heaven will be eternity with him. 
Eternity with him could be nothing but heaven. 
His presence and fellowship with him would 
turn the deepest hell into the seventh heaven, 
and the seventh heaven would be the darkest 
abyss of woe without him. 

I was once asked by a student if I thought 
of the description of heaven in Revelation 21 
and 22 as figurative or literal language. My 
answer was that I thought it was figurative. 
The student thought this would take all the 
reality out of salvation and make it “only a 
figure of speech.” My reply to this was that 
to make the language there used literal would 
give us rather a cheap heaven. I do not think 
I should care for a heaven that was all city. 
I should like to get out into the country oc- 
casionally. Ifa city of streets of literal gold, 
and a river of literal water and a tree of literal 
fruit is the best heaven that can be found in the 
life beyond, one can do almost that well here. 
Jesus offered to the woman at the well water 
that was better than that. Surely he will have 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 121 


something superior to it for us in the Great 
Beyond’. 

Yes, these wondrous symbols of John’s 
heavenly city represent to us the blessedness 
of that life in which God and the Lamb con- 
Stitute its light, its temple, its glory. God and 
the Lamb will there be the light of our souls, 
the temple of our worship, the glory of the 
eternal life of the redeemed. 





*The book of Revelation belongs to a class of literature that 
dealt in apocalyptic imagery never meant to be taken literally. 





THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESUR- 
RECTION OF JESUS FOR THE 
COMING OF THE KING- 

DOM OF GOD 


ey 
A) 


‘ 


{ A my vA if ih 





CHAPTER VII 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURREC- 
TION OF JESUS FOR THE COMING 
OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 


HY kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10). Thus 

Jesus taught his disciples to pray. We 
gather from this that the coming of the king- 
dom of God is to be one of the chief matters of 
thought, prayer and effort on the part of his 
disciples. 


THREE PHASES OF THE KINGDOM 


We might begin this chapter by a summary 
statement with reference to three phases of the 
kingdom of God as set forth in the New Testa- 
ment.’ These three phases are its initiation, 
its progress and its consummation. 

The kingdom of God was founded or initi- 
ated by the coming of Christ into the world for 
the salvation of sinners. The historical estab- 
lishment of the gospel order was the founding 





7On this point, see my “System of Christian Doctrine,” Part 
Four, Chapter V. 


{125 j 


126 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


or initiation of the kingdom of God on earth. 
This gospel had been promised or prefigured in 
the Old Testament order of things (Rom. 1: 
1-3; 4: 1ff. Gal. 4: 1ff and the whole book of 
Hebrews). The gospel fulfilled the Old Testa- 
ment dispensation as the day fulfils the dawn, 
or as the man fulfils the boy. That which was ~ 
partial and incomplete came to fuller develop- 
ment and realization (Matt. 5: 17ff; Heb. 1: 
1). | 

That the kingdom of God was initiated with 
the coming of Jesus into the world is made 
clear in the New Testament. John the Bap- 
tist preached that men should repent because 
the kingdom of heaven was at hand (Matt. 3: 
2). John’s work was preparatory. He was 
the voice of one crying in the wilderness to 
make ready the way of the Lord, to make his 
paths straight (Matt. 3: 3; Isa. 40: 1ff) ; that 
is, John’s work was to prepare a highway over 
which the coming Messianic King was to have 
his triumphal entry. Matthew’s Gospel is here 
definitely setting forth Jesus as the King prom- 
ised in the Old Testament and John as his 
forerunner. 

Jesus also came preaching that men should 
repent and believe the gospel, on the ground 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 127 


that the time was fulfilled and the kingdom of 
God was at hand (Mark 1: 14, 15). On an- 
other occasion, being asked by the Pharisees 
when the kingdom of God should come, he 
said that the kingdom did not come with out- 
ward demonstration or observation. No man 
could announce the kingdom, saying: “Lo, 
here! or there!”” But Jesus said, “The king- 
dom of God is within you,” or “‘in your midst,”’ 
it might be translated. Either translation in- 
volves the idea that the kingdom was a pres- 
ent, spiritual reality that came without observa- 
tion or outward show. It was there and the 
Pharisees did not know it. Besides, Jesus an- 
nounced the conditions of entrance into the 
kingdom of God; such as being converted and 
becoming as a little child (Matt. 18: 1-4; Luke 
18: 17) and being born again (John 3: 3, 5). 
If Jesus means for men of his day to have the 
qualities of childlikeness, humility, and con- 
scious poverty of spirit (Matt. 5: 3), if he 
meant that they should bear persecution for 
righteousness’ sake, then he meant for them 
to understand that the kingdom of God was 
a present reality. 

But there is no use to dwell longer on this 
point. It is one on which New Testament 


128 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


students are agreed. It is true that there is a 
form of radicalism that holds that Jesus started 
with the expectation of being received by the 
Jews as their king, but had to revise his pro- 
gram when he saw that they would not receive 
him and hence postponed the kingdom to a 
future age. There is a form of premillennialism 
that agrees with this view that Jesus postponed 
the founding of the kingdom to a future age. 
But either form of this view that denies that 
Jesus taught that the kingdom was a present 
reality in his day is so utterly out of harmony 
with the gospel records that there is no use to 
spend more space on the matter. 

Jesus also taught that the kingdom was to 
have indefinite advancement during the present 
gospel age. This is made clear in the parables 
of the leaven and of the mustard seed (Matt. 
15181283). 

It is true that there are those who say that 
these parables do not teach the growth of the 
reign of truth and righteousness, but rather the 
growth and power of error and evil within pro- 
fessedly Christian ranks. This view, however, 
does not come from an exegesis of these pas- 
Sages; it is a view imposed on the passages 





*See Stafford, “A Study of the Kingdom.” 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 129 


from the preconceived ideas of the advocate. 
A man can see this view in these passages only 
by reading them through his own pessimistic 
and disordered vision. Jesus does not, in these 
passages or anywhere else, tell us just how 
complete will be the triumphs of the kingdom 
during the gospel age. He does teach his dis- 
ciples to pray that God’s kingdom shall come 
and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven 
(Matt. 6: 10). They are to preach the gospel 
to the uttermost part of the earth (Acts 1: 8). 
They are to evangelize, make disciples, of all 
nations. But they are to do more than that. 
They are to strive to bring all men completely 
under the sway of God’s will and Christ’s rule. 
They are to teach all disciples all things that 
he has commanded them (Matt. 28: 18-20). 
We may never completely attain this ideal any 
more than we can completely attain the ideal 
of godlikeness in individual character, but 
that is no reason why we should not move in 
the direction of the goal and strive with all our 
might for its attainment. 

Indeed, there are indications that evil will 
not be completely eliminated from the Mes- 
siah’s kingdom until the end. The parable of 
the tares seems to teach that only at the end 


130 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


of the age will the Son of Man come and make 
the final and complete separation between the 
good and the bad (Matt. 13: 30, 40-43). This 
agrees with what is said about the judgment 
in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew. Only 
when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of 
judgment will the final separation take place. 
Paul teaches practically the same thing when 
he says that death (in the resurrection) is to 
be the last enemy that Christ is to conquer. He 
locates this at the second coming (1 Cor. 15: 
24-28). 

There are, then, in the teaching of Jesus 
and in the New Testament as a whole these 
three phases of the kingdom: its initiation in 
the coming of Jesus and the founding of the 
gospel order, its progress during the gospel 
age, and its consummation at the final mani- 
festation of Christ with the ushering in of the 
eternal kingdom of God. 


THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM 


It is also made clear in the teaching of Jesus, 
as well as in the rest of the New Testament, 
that the kingdom of God was not to be a politi- 
cal kingdom. It was not to be promoted by 
military power nor carnal weapons. It was 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 131 


thus fundamentally different from the Jewish 
theocracy of the Old Testament. The quali- 
ties of the subjects of the kingdom were spir- 
itual qualities—purity of heart, meekness of 
Spirit, non-resistance to evil, trustful submis- 
sion to God and soon. The kingdom signified 
primarily the reign of God in the hearts of 
men. 

But the kingdom was social in its nature as 
well as spiritual. Perhaps I should say that it 
was social because it was spiritual. To be at 
peace with God means to be at peace with 
men. To love God means to love one’s brother. 
To have God’s forgiveness means to forgive 
one’s brother. 

The kingdom of God, then, is the rule of 
God’s love and forgiving grace in the hearts 
and lives of men; such a rule as will ideally 
bring all human relationships and social activi- 
ties in obedience to the will of God. 


NO TEMPORAL REIGN ON EARTH 


In a former chapter we saw that the resur- 
rection signified the triumph of Jesus over sin 
and death and gives us a Christ of universal 
power and knowledge, a Christ who transcends 
the limitations of time and space and is with 


132 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


his people everywhere as they live in spiritual 
fellowship with him. The resurrection of Jesus 
thus defines for us the nature of the kingdom 
in that it determines the nature of the king. 
As we saw in the former chapter, Jesus did 
not rise to live again on the natural plane of 
life on which he had lived before his death. 
His resurrection was more than resuscitation. 
This precludes the idea that Jesus will ever re- 
turn to the world to establish a literal reign of 
a thousand years, or of any other length of 
time, here on the earth. He may reign on earth 
after his return, but if so his reign will be a 
different character from any thing we know 
now on the earth. The subjects of that reign 
will have to be introduced into it by death and 
resurrection or by a corresponding transforma- 
tion if still living when Jesus comes. There 
will not be a mixed order of things in which 
Christ in his glorified state, with saints raised 
to the glorified state, will reign over men and 
women being born during that age with bodies 
of flesh and blood, subject to decay and death. 
Such an order would be an anomaly, a spiritual 
absurdity. If Christ reigns on the earth after 
his return, it will be over saints in resurrection 
bodies living in a world that has been renovated 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 133 


and made new. It will be a new order of 
things through and through, not an order 
partly of the old and partly of the new. Death 
and decay will be done away with at his com- 
ing (1 Cor. 15: 24ff) and all evil shall be cast 
out of his kingdom (Matt. 13: 40ff). 


ASSURANCE OF TRIUMPH 


Our assurance of the triumph of the king- 
dom of God lies in the fact that Jesus rose 
from the dead and lives forevermore. The kev 
to the understanding of the book of Revelation 
is in the first chapter in John’s vision of the 
living Christ. This Christ appears to John in 
his majestic strength, alive from the dead, and 
announces to John that he is alive forevermore 
(vs. 17, 18). One noticeable thing about this 
Christ as he appears to John is that there pro- 
ceeds from his mouth a sharp two-edged sword 
(vs. 16). This signifies that the Son of God 
goes forth to war. Doubtless the sharp two- 
edged sword proceeding out of his mouth is 
the word of God, the gospel of salvation. 
Through this gospel he is to subdue the nations 
and the kingdom of God is to come. The Son 
of God will never cease to make war until his 
enemies bite the dust and the rule of this earth 


134 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


has passed into the hands of God and of his 
Christ\( Rev. Tis 1512-4107" 

Christ’s resurrection signified his triumph 
over sin and death. He grappled with sin and 
death in a terrific struggle and conquered them. 
This was true so far as his more immediate 
and personal relations with sin and death were 
concerned. And this more immediate and per- 
sonal victory is the token of a universal victory 
that is to come. Christ did not cease his war- 
fare on sin and death when he rose from the 
dead. That was only the first round of the 
fight. It was just the successful issue of the 
first campaign of a long warfare. And the liv- 
ing Christ himself is conducting that warfare. 
Some Christians talk as if they thought 
Christ’s followers were orphans in the world. 
But he said that he would not leave us orphans. 
He said, I come to you (John 14: 18). And 
he did come. He came in spiritual power on 
the day of Pentecost. By the power of his 
Spirit, using his people and his gospel, he is 
now working for the extension of his kingdom 
on earth. One day he will manifest himself 
for the consummation of that kingdom. 

But let us encourage ourselves with the 
thought that the kingdom of God is to triumph. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 135 


It will triumph, both in its progress during this 
age and in its final consummation. Wherein 
lies our assurance of this? It lies in the fact 
that Jesus ts alive from the dead. Evil is pow- 
erful in the world. It has been fastening its 
hold on the world for centuries and centuries. 
Sometimes one is tempted to think that its 
strong hold on human life cannot be broken. 
If one had no assurance other than that that 
comes from a surface view of things, this would 
probably be a justifiable conclusion. But sur- 
face appearances are not always, if ever, the 
truest ones. To get at the truth with refer- 
ence to any phase of reality or life, one often 
‘ has to look long and patiently until he discerns 
what is not at first apparent. If one looks at 
any phase of human life and activity, it is not 
at all apparent at first that righteousness will 
triumph over sin and evil. If one looks at 
business, politics, public amusements, educa- 
tion, religion itself, there is much that is dis- 
couraging. Sin does have a mighty hold on 
human life and activity. 

And let it be said here that no man has a 
right to be an optimist with reference to human 
life who has not faced the concrete facts and 
ills of life. There is too much of what some- 


136 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


body has called the “cheerful idiot’ type of 
optimism—the kind of optimism that encour- 
ages itself by disregarding the ills and suffer- 
ings of the world, like a boy trying to keep up 
his courage by whistling as he passes a lonely 
cemetery on a dark night. The writer also rec- 
ognizes the fact that many superficial formu- 
Jas have been proposed for the woes of the 
world. He has no desire to add another to the 
list of these cheap formulas. Nor does he be- 
lieve in the optimism of the well-fed and well- 
kept. It is easy enough for the well-kept man 
to look in superficial wisdom on the sufferings 
of his less fortunate brothers and tell them that 
their sufferings are not so serious after all. 
And yet recognizing the seriousness of the 
sin and evil of the world; recognizing, too, that 
it is not sin in the abstract, such as the theo- 
logian and the philosopher have often dealt 
with, that ails the world, but sins in the con- 
crete; recognizing that the evil of the world is — 
radical and powerful—the author still believes 
that God is greater than sin and that his Christ 
is to triumph over it. He is to triumph be- 
cause he has triumphed. He has given a 
demonstration of his sin-conquering power. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 137 


I doubt if any man can be a pessimist and 
really believe in the resurrection of Jesus. The 
Christian’s optimism with reference to the 
triumph of the kingdom of God grows out of 
his communion with the risen Lord. One who 
shares the life of the Christ who conquered sin 
and death in resurrection power has in his own 
heart the assurance of the ultimate triumph of 
righteousness over evil, of Christ over Satan. 
This is not to fall back on a blind mysticism. 
The Christian’s communion with the living 
Christ is not blind mysticism. It is mysticism; 
that is, it is communion of the finite with the 
Infinite, of man with God. But it is not blind, 
because it is based on objective, historical facts 
and also it is an intelligent committal of one- 
self to the living Christ that brings a response 
that lifts the whole life of the believer on to a 
higher moral and spiritual plane. 

This assurance with reference to the pro- 
gressive and final triumph of the kingdom, 
then, is not a matter of logical demonstration 
mainly; nor is it exclusively a matter of Scrip- 
ture exegesis; it is largely a matter of spiritual 
intuition; it comes as a result of spiritual ex- 
perience. One knows that Christ will ulti- 
mately triumph over all evil because one now 


138 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


experiences the power of Christ that is sin- 
conquering and evil-transcending in its nature. 
It is thus a matter of religious faith, certainly 
not a scientific demonstration. We are here 
dealing with a realm where scientific demon- 
Stration is out of the question. 

This faith, however, does give an assurance 
that nerves one for the most heroic endeavor in 
promoting the kingdom of God on earth. This 
assurance with reference to the coming of the 
kingdom, then, is not to be taken as an en- 
couragement to a supine and inactive waiting, 
but as an incentive to militant activity to bring 
in the reign of righteousness among men. 
Faith in the living Christ and his program of 
world conquest does not lull one to sleep but 
stirs him to activity. 


WHAT CHRISTIANS NEED 


What present-day Christians need above all 
else is a fresh inflow of spiritual power from 
the risen Christ. We have money, organiza- 
tion, machinery. Our greatest need as Chris- 
tians is spiritual power. We do not have too 
much of these other things, but we do have too 
little of spiritual power. Perhaps it might be 
said that we have as much of these other 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 139 


things as we need unless we had more spirit- 
ual power. Possibly we have as much material 
wealth and ecclesiastical organization as we 
can use to good ends unless we had more spir- 
itual power. Money, learning, social prestige 
—these things cannot of themselves bring in 
the kingdom of God. It is not by military 
might, nor by political power, nor by ecclesias- 
tical organization, but by the power of the di- 
vine Spirit that human hearts are killed to the 
love of evil and brought under the sway of 
the will of God. I believe in evangelism, mis- 
sions, social service, peace programs, move- 
ments for promoting international justice and 
good will, but all these things are useless and 
vain unless informed by a wisdom that is more 
than human and energized by a power that is 
above man’s. The wisdom that must guide 
and the power that must energize in all these 
movements must be personal in its nature and 
source—the power of the living Christ. 
Christians need to recognize anew the living 
Christ, submit anew to him, preach him with 
fresh power which he will furnish, and thus 
set forward the kingdom of God among men. 





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